


How to Unscramble an Egg

by deanine



Category: Deadpool (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, No Romance, Peter is going to need a Xanax after this, Potentially Traumatic Themes - Freeform, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-02-11 13:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12935889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanine/pseuds/deanine
Summary: Deadpool’s Dictionary:roommate [ˈro͞omˌmāt, ˈro͝omˌmāt] NOUN  the person that lives with you, a person that you did NOT kidnap.  Are they a person you’re confining against their will?  Yes, technically, but for their own good.  It isn’t kidnaping if you’re helping the confined person out.  It’s roommates!





	1. Summer Camp

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The primary continuity is MCU but only up to Homecoming. This story goes full retroactive continuity on Deadpool. We’re more comic than movie verse but not really that either. To make this AU work, his origins are completely changed. 
> 
> 2\. There will be no romance to speak of in here so if you were looking for that flavor of Deadpool and Spider-Man, you’re in the wrong place. 
> 
> 3\. If you’re looking for a quirky AU that involves some humor, drama and angst, pull up a chair and sit a spell. That’s where we’re going.

_“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – Albert Einstein_

  


Nerd nirvana, Ned Leeds bedroom had all the trappings of a post-millennial super-nerd whose parents could spare a reasonably generous weekly allowance. Posters filled the walls, some retro-cool like his Bobba Fet portrait, others more current like his new Stranger Things lithograph. An entire corner was Lego land, where his favorite kits resided in various states of assembly. Ignoring the beautiful array of toys and games, Ned and Peter crouched together over a crumpled flyer with an enthusiastic heading, Summer Science Fun Camps. 

“You don’t understand,” Peter said. “May is all up in arms about this life balance stuff. She’s mad that I quit band and robotics lab to make time to be Spider-Man. The school sent the summer activities schedule to her directly, so she knows about all of it and she expects some reasonable level of participation from me.” 

“It’s not exactly the end of the world, Peter,” Ned said. “I’ll be taking the robotics day camp, so you could do that with me?” 

“Right. Did you see the buy in for that camp? We can’t afford that. I’m thinking the chemistry camp would maybe be enough to satisfy her. I like chemistry, and the buy in isn’t that bad.” Peter circled the chemistry camp bullet item. “If she wants me to do one other, I could do the physics thing they’re having for the fourth of July.” 

“You know that’s basically build-a-rocket weekend, right?” Ned said. “I’m so signing up for that.” 

Peter circled the physics event and grinned. “I did not know that, but it sounds like a useful life skill.” 

“For terrorists and masked vigilantes both,” Ned said. “So May, she’s really okay with the Spider-Man stuff?” 

With a shrug and a half-smile Peter started packing away his things. “Okay enough.” May was not okay with the Spider-Man stuff, but their fight about it reached an impasse that neither had been willing to take farther. May wasn’t going to throw him out even if he refused to stop, and Peter wasn’t going to stop, even if she threw him out. 

They compromised and now Peter was responding to text messages within thirty minutes unless he wanted her blowing up Tony Stark’s phone looking for him. He was not dropping any more classes or extracurricular activities to make time for Spider-Man. Last but not least, he was not allowed to lie to her anymore. If he couldn’t be honest with her about what Spider-Man was getting up to, then she couldn’t deal with the situation. It was sort of working for them so far. 

“Don’t forget Decathlon. It’s the last meeting of the year and recruitment push for next year. We need to support MJ in her new captaincy, yeah?” Ned walked Peter to the door and they exchanged their handshake with the easy flow of a gesture they’d been making almost daily since junior high. 

“See you tomorrow, Ned.” 

Gaining superpowers like super-hearing or vision sounded really cool when you were reading about them in comics. In reality, they made life a lot more complicated and sometimes painful. Preparing for the walk home, Peter shoved in his ear buds and turned on some music, a nice buffer against the world of sounds on a New York City street. It did nothing to filter the visual assault that would be waiting for him, but dealing with one sense at a time was way more manageable. 

Letting the flow of pedestrians lead him along, Peter registered little blips on his other sense that got a work out walking the streets. His spider-sense as he had dubbed it liked to keep him abreast of imminent danger, like his very own tsunami early warning system. Unfortunately, that sense seemed to be very short sighted, only giving a few seconds warning before the action started. It also seemed determined to warn him about something twenty-four seven lately. An icy tickle down his spine had all the hairs on his arms turning up with goose pimples, but the sensation wasn’t any stronger than it had been for the last month, so Peter ignored it and tried to get lost in the music while he walked. 

He had mentioned the phenomenon to Mr. Stark. After a bit of testing, Peter had accepted his theory that the spider-sense was maybe becoming more acute and registering things that were more subtle threats creating the constant stimulation. It was the best idea they had for the moment. 

Once inside his apartment building, the annoying buzz of his spider-sense faded back to almost nothing. The apartment smelled like May was cooking, in other words it smelled a little smoky. “May, I’m home,” Peter announced. 

“It’s about time.” May came out of the kitchen, spatula in hand. “This is a no-patrol night. I thought we agreed. Where have you been?” 

“I just stopped by Ned’s after school. We were discussing what summer activities we might sign up for.” Peter offered her the flier as though she hadn’t already seen it. “Do you think those two would be okay?” 

May glanced at his choices and frowned. “What about robotics? I thought you liked robotics and you were good at it. Maybe you should get back involved in that? You definitely have time for that this summer, or you could rejoin the band. I liked your trumpet playing. I know the neighbors upstairs were never fans, but you weren’t bad. Music is good for the soul.” 

“I picked the activities that I want to do. Chemistry and physics are two of my favorite classes.” When May didn’t back down, Peter argued what he hadn’t wanted to mention. “We can’t afford the Robotics camp. Over a thousand dollars for a two week day camp? It’s ridiculous. And you know I love music, but we both know I’m never going to be very good at making it.” 

“Money is not an object when it comes to your education. You have a scholarship,” May countered firmly. “We may as well get this out of the way, but I had a talk with your, mentor, Tony Stark. “He agreed that he ought to invest as much in Peter Parker as he already has in Spider-Man.” 

“You extorted Mr. Stark?” Peter asked. 

“We had a conversation. There wasn’t any extortion involved.” May waved her stunned nephew toward the bathroom. “Get cleaned up. Dinner is ready.” 

* * *

A surprising percentage of the student body showed up to the last Decathlon meeting of the year. Mr. Harrington started things off with an introduction about how prestigious and important this club was before introducing MJ as the captain and turning the podium over to her. 

“So, yeah, we’ll be holding tryouts for next year’s team in the first week of school. We like to have specialists in the major sciences and humanities. The returning members are not guaranteed a spot on next year’s team, but they’re all good, so if you want to take a spot, you’re going to need to work. Anyone who’s interested can sit in on the practice this afternoon and get information on what to study over the summer afterwards.” She nodded to the new students and turned to the current team. “Peter and Ned vs Cindy and Abraham, let’s do this.” 

It was fun teaming up with Ned and dominating at a game they were both excellent at. The questions were fairly physics heavy and that was Peter’s specialty. Flash rolled his eyes every time Peter chimed in with a correct answer, but it wasn’t anything new. Flash’s specialty was physics too, but he hadn’t been able to match Peter head to head in two years trying. 

By the time practice was over, Peter was feeling tired and overstimulated from listening closely and buzzing and trying extra hard for MJ’s sake. He and Ned hung around until the newbies had left and the rest of the team too. 

“Thanks for the effort,” MJ said. “It set a good tone. Peter, for the record, if you don’t have better attendance next year, I’m not keeping you on the team, I don’t care how much math you can do in your head.” 

“Don’t get all mad with power,” Ned said. “Peter has turned over a new leaf with his extracurricular activities.” 

“Yeah, well, May turned a leaf over for me, but I’ll be there,” Peter said. “Are you going to be in any of the summer school activities?” 

“Nah, I’ll be spending the summer with my grandparents in the country. Mom thinks it’s good for me to get out of the city, experience nature at least once a year.” In one of those rare moments when MJ didn’t seem absolutely sure of herself she offered the boys an invitation. “If you guys want to come upstate some time this summer just text me. It’s an organic vegetable farm. It’s really pretty.” 

Peter couldn’t help smiling at the thought of having another place he was welcome upstate. Maybe the Avengers and MJ’s grandparents were neighbors? 

“That would be awesome,” Ned said. “Except, well, I’ve never been to the country. I mean how rural are we talking?” 

“It’s upstate New York, not the movie Deliverance,” MJ said. She shot him a one fingered salute for insinuating that her grandparents were scary rednecks. “Whatever, I’ve got to go.” 

MJ was already halfway to the door when Peter spoke up. “I’ll have to ask my aunt, but it sounds fun.” She gave him his own one finger salute on her way out the door, but she looked back and smiled so he knew she didn’t mean it, not really. 

Gearing up to walk out with Ned, Peter’s spider-sense popped to life early, a chill that made him shiver. “Ned, watch out. Something’s wrong.” 

The early warning system was nice, but only a few seconds didn’t necessarily lend itself to massively strategic planning. Suddenly, projectiles were flying and Peter was barely able to roll out of the line of fire. Ned wasn’t so lucky. He turned to Peter, a dart stuck in his neck, like a zebra on a nature documentary, he toppled to the floor. 

Moving quickly to avoid the next volley of darts, Peter scampered, scanning for the enemy. “Who’s there?” Peter shouted. If Ned weren’t laying there unprotected, Peter could run for cover and at least get suited up. 

With an acrobatic leap the likes of which Peter rarely got to see since he was usually the one performing them, the attacker dropped out of the stage’s rigging equipment. A pair of guns clenched in both hands, he was wearing a striking red and black bodysuit, a couple of samurai swords on his back and a mask that sported a pair of white eyes that reminded Peter more than a little of his spider-suit. 

Not thinking much past protecting Ned, Peter moved to stand between the crazy guy and his unconscious friend. “Hey, we’re just a couple of kids. What do you want?” 

“Oh bunny rabbit, I know who you are. If you want to keep your roundish friend there breathing, stand still and take your medicine.” 

Not seeing a way to both dodge the incoming darts and protect Ned, Peter let them strike him in the chest. Numbness spread rapidly from the darts’ point of impact and he didn’t maintain his feet for long. Standing over him, the maniac in red reloaded the dart pistols. 

“Are we still awake, bunny rabbit? Don’t worry I brought plenty of medicine.” He fired two more darts into the prone teen’s back. Then Peter didn’t know anything for a long while. 

* * *

The Parker family had experienced more than its fair share of tragedy, death and destruction. You might think they would get a break statistically at least. One plane crash plus one murder plus one genetically contagious spider bite should equal a couple of generations of peace and quiet at least, May reasoned. Her nephew could have explained to her that one statistically improbable event didn’t stop the next bad thing from happening. It wasn’t how statistics worked. 

Finding out Peter’s Spider-Man secret had left May angry and shocked, but strangely relieved too. After months of wondering what his deal really was, she knew. Her kid wasn’t on drugs or a criminal or in a gang. He was a hero. When he got himself killed in a fit of adolescent stupidity, he would probably be attempting a noble endeavor. The thought didn’t make her feel better. 

It was normal to worry about your kid. If your kid was Spider-Man you basically lived life at DEFCON 3, always mentally preparing for the next disaster. When May got home from work before Peter, she didn’t worry any more than usual. He had decathlon practice today and probably went home with Ned again, or even went on Spider-Man patrol. If Peter wasn’t home by his curfew, she would call or text, not a second sooner. 

May put a pot on to boil for noodles and clicked on the TV, less for entertainment than for the noise and maybe she left it on one of the twenty-four hour cable news channels in case there was any breaking news involving Spider-Man. 

Her phone vibrated and May peeked at the notification, then promptly dropped the package of chicken she had been about to open. It was from Midtown Science and Technology. 

_Did Peter Parker make it home safely from school today? Please respond to this text message, yes, no or unknown. This text number is only monitored by a bot. It cannot answer questions. Further information will be available at the school website._

When the school sent out its disaster protocol, these head counts were phase one of the recovery process. Something had happened at the school and they were trying to get a location on all the unaccounted for students. Disaster encompassed a wide array of things from an unsubstantiated bomb threat to a mass shooting. It took May entirely too long to type out unknown with shaking hands. Not bothering with texts, she called Peter. Whatever had happened at school Peter had probably thrown himself in the middle of it. His voicemail beeped at her and she left a less than composed message requesting an immediate call back. 

The stupid website wouldn’t come up for her, crashed under the sudden influx of parents looking for information. Another text message came through from the school. 

_Please stay home. If your child/children are accounted for, please leave the website clear for parents trying to locate students. Critical messages will be filtered through the PTA Facebook page until the school website is back online._

The news broadcast caught May’s attention even as she tried to get on the PTA Facebook page. “Breaking news from New York City’s Midtown School of Science and Technology. After classes had ended for the day, a shooter infiltrated the auditorium where a school meeting had recently ended. It is unknown if any students remained at the time of the attack or if anyone was injured. Stay tuned for further details as they become available.” 

Just like that, May skipped DEFCON 2 and went straight to 1. She started texting everyone she could think of then calling them for good measure including Happy Hogan and Tony Stark. 

* * *

Most people would say that Deadpool’s teleportation portal was silent, but Blind Al would disagree. It had a whisper of a click like a large button being depressed. She liked that it wasn’t silent, that she got a little warning when her captor had decided to drop in. 

Over the years, Wade Wilson had brought home some interesting stuff. Today he outdid himself. Singing a Christmas carol under his breath, he dumped a suspiciously large bundle onto the couch. Al was pretty certain it was springtime at least, but considering that she was locked away in a madman’s lair, it might very well be winter. She would have a hard time proving it one way or another. 

“A present for me?” Al asked. “You shouldn’t have.” 

“Present? Please. This here is going to be our new roommate. His name is Peter. He’s a bit younger than you, Al so I’m going to require some more severe measures to keep him tethered up good.” 

Al could hear a screwdriver going and clicking metal and buzzing electronics. “A new roommate that’s younger than me? Are we talking sixty? Thirty? Twenty? And what the Hell did this Peter do to get a ticket to hotel Deadpool?” 

“Oh Al, twenty really? What do you take me for? He’s fifteen, maybe. You’ll explain the rules to him when he wakes up, yes?” 

“Wade! You can’t kidnap some kid and lock him up here.” Al could still hear the power tools at work. “This isn’t like keeping me captive. I’m an old woman.” I deserve it for the things I’ve done, went unspoken. 

“You might want to watch it with telling me what I can and can’t do.” The drill was suddenly whirring rather close to her face. “I’ll be back in a little while, letter to deliver. Peter should wake up in a day or two. I darted him with a shit ton of ketamine. It’s too bad you’re blind. He’s a cute little rabbit when he sleeps.” 

Al worked her way over to the couch and she used her hands to determine if Deadpool had been bluffing about the kid’s age. “A fucking kid,” she confirmed under her breath. She traced her hands over the young man looking for injuries. She found some rather massive metal cuffs that ran from the kids elbows to his wrists. Similar cuffs covered his legs from his knees to his ankles but they didn’t seem to be anchored to anything. With a sigh, Al worked her way to the kitchen and set a pot on to boil. 

A cup of tea would make her feel better even if it wouldn’t do anything about the new curve ball Wade’s psychotic brain had decided to throw out. 

* * *

The security system in the Avenger’s Compound had just enough time to register an intruder when Deadpool popped into Tony’s Stark’s private living quarters via teleportation portal. He affixed a single sheet of paper to the refrigerator, tossed a jaunty wave at the nearest camera, and slipped out via another portal. 

On the back of the flier for Summer Science Fun Activities, Deadpool had created his own flier. He had doodled cute little Deadpool and Spider-Man cartoons around the printing, along with generous hearts and stars. 

_****_

_**DEADPOOL’s First Annual Super Hero Sleep Away Camp** _

_The bunny rabbit is staying with me this summer._

_  
If you want me to send him home._

_  
Clean up your house._  


_  
Asshole._  



	2. Matlock Interrupted

In anger, Tony Stark was rarely subtle. Pacing one of the many conference rooms in the Avengers’ compound, he listened to Rhodey’s debriefing on the mercenary who went by the name Deadpool for as long as he could stand it without interrupting. He almost let him finish two sentences. “Let me get this straight,” Tony interjected. “A two-bit merc that is known to be, psychotic, was it? Right, a psychotic mercenary takes an interest in Spider-Man, figures out his secret identity, kidnaps him and leaves a love note in my damn house, using technology that I’ve never seen before. Is there a reason I’d never heard his name before today? Do we have another Toomes, handing out alien technology to anyone with a little cash to spare? Please enlighten me.” 

“There are a lot of mentally unstable mercenaries. It’s common in the profession, and Deadpool has been around for decades. He’s dangerous and unpredictable but he never gets involved with anything significant. He kills for money, not principals. The idea that he would kidnap Spider-Man unless someone paid him a lot of money to do so, doesn’t fit with his M.O.” Rhodey shrugged. “As for the tech, he’s had an unusual subset of technology for almost as long as he’s been on the scene. Various governments have tried to bring him in from time to time to have a look at that technology. It never works out very well for them.” 

“He’s money motivated?” Tony tapped the wall and a screen filled with an enlarged copy of Deadpool’s note. “That doesn’t sound like a ransom. What the Hell does he mean, clean my house? If he’s referring to personnel, we’ll have to drop the plural from the name Avengers if anyone else leaves.” 

“The most obvious implication is that he or whoever he’s working for thinks something dirty is happening here. Maybe he’s referring to Stark Industries? Or maybe he thinks you keep a cluttered lab? The man is psychotic. Asking him to be clear and concise in his demands is a little unrealistic,” Rhodey said. 

“Unfortunate for us that he can’t express himself more clearly since he has a fifteen year old hostage, doing God knows what to him.” Tony clenched his fists and resumed pacing. “You say this guy showed up in the mid seventies, right? He doesn’t move like an AARP eligible mercenary.” Tony played the security footage from Deadpool’s jaunt through his kitchen side by side with the more grainy footage from his attack on Peter’s school. “Is he enhanced, maybe another failed super soldier?” 

“Maybe?” Rhodey shrugged. “We’d know more if anyone had ever been able to capture him. We don’t even have a picture without that ridiculous mask on. He has occasionally gone by the name Wade Wilson but it’s a dead end, an alias and not one he even bothered to flesh out and fake properly from what we can tell.” 

“You know what, we’re just going to have a face to face with Mr. Wilson. Let’s make this idiot nostalgic for the days that he just had to dodge the N.S.A. and S.H.I.E.L.D.” Tony cracked his knuckles and started walking to his lab, Rhodey a step behind him. 

“What can I do?” 

“Make sure our jurisdiction is clear here. Make sure the locals don’t have any idea about Peter’s secret identity. The kid runs around with the suit in his backpack most of the time. Its tracker says it’s in police lockup now. Get that back if you can. Assuming this isn’t the psychotic idiot randomly spreading havoc, then he’s been hired to do this. Any connections you have that might know who paid the jackass to piss in my Cheerios, hit them up, would you?” Tony asked that last bit with a sarcastic grimace. 

“You got it, and Tony,” Rhodey said, “the kid’s going to be okay. We’ll find him.” 

“We’d better.” Tony held up his phone, showing his friend the twenty some odd notifications he had from Peter’s aunt. “They’ve been questioning the woman for three hours as the local police precinct. Get her out of there too if you can.” 

* * *

Before the spider bite, Peter woke up gradually in steady stages. There were days that he was halfway through breakfast before his mind had fully come online. After the bite that changed. His mind no longer worked in slow stages at anything. The difference between asleep and awake was a light switch, crisply abrupt. Somehow he had gone back in time and wakefulness wouldn’t quite come though sleep had slipped away. The world smelled wrong and the sounds were strange too. A television was playing, but the sounds of the city were absent. 

When the world finally came into focus, Peter had to wonder how he had fallen asleep in some strange apartment with paper peeling off the walls and piles of magazines stacked on the floor like something from an episode of Hoarders. Sitting up was entirely too complicated. His brain and limbs seemed to be communicating on different wavelengths and there were some odd accessories attached to his arms and legs. Spider-Man who climbed sheer walls and swung through Queens like an urban Tarzan, fell off the couch trying to sit up. 

If he weren’t completely lost and somehow uncoordinated as a newborn, he might have the spare mental power to be embarrassed. As it was, he managed to sit up, resting against the listing old couch. Focusing on the metal cuffs encircling his forearms, Peter tried to find a crease or crevice to pry them open. He couldn’t quite get any leverage. The longer he sat and breathed, the more he started to feel like himself. 

“Hey kid, good morning. I was starting to worry about you there.” An old black woman, tall and wrinkled and so thin that she looked almost brittle, settled on the couch he had just vacated. “My name’s Althea, but you can call me Al. What’s your name?” 

Peter quickly confirmed that he did not have his mask on but since he couldn’t remember how he had gotten here, he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t started with it on. He wasn’t about to accidentally give his secret identity away if he could help it. “Maybe you could tell me where I am and how I got here and then you could maybe help me get these really odd accessories off? They don’t go with my outfit.” Peter clicked the metal bands together for emphasis. 

“You get tired of me calling you kid, speak up with a name, all right? This is Deadpool’s house. He carried you in here, dropped you on this couch, ‘bout like a sack of potatoes, and rigged a leash of some kind to keep you here.” Al used her remote to change the channel. “I don’t know exactly how those cuffs work, but if you try to escape, you’ll likely find out.” 

“Deadpool? I don’t know a Deadpool. Did he say why he captured me?” Peter asked, still working at the metal cuffs. “Did he work for the Vulture, for Mr. Toomes? Why don’t I remember being captured?” 

“Well, Deadpool said he drugged you with a ‘shit ton of ketamine’ and while I don’t know what the metric conversion of a shit ton is, ketamine can cause short term amnesia at normal doses. He didn’t bother to explain why he drugged you or brought you back here.” Al turned the television’s volume up a couple of notches. “Now hush up for a bit. This is my show. If you’re thirsty or hungry, kitchen’s that way. Lavatory is over there.” Al pointed to a busted door, literally hanging off its hinges. 

The thought of water had Peter on his feet and walking, relatively steadily to the bathroom. “Don’t be worried about your modesty. Deadpool broke that door ages ago, but I’m blind so it don’t much matter.” He gave Al another look and she was wearing dark tinted shades, like a blind person might. 

“Thanks.” Peter pulled the door as closed as it would go and quickly determined that the bathroom wasn’t in much better shape than the living room. The vanity mirror was cracked into a spiraling spiderweb of shards, and the toilet tilted to the left enough that Peter was glad he didn’t need to test it with his weight to relieve his painful bladder. 

His mind was starting to run at pre-ketamine speeds and Peter quickly decided that beyond using the toilet and maybe a little water from the tap, Mr. Deadpool and Ms. Althea could keep their hospitality. After washing his hands, he gulped enough water to relieve his sandpaper mouth. Peter climbed the wall up to the narrow bathroom window, touched the sill, and found out what one hundred thousand volts of electricity felt like when channeled through the human body. 

In front of Al, the television sparked dramatically and died. Apparently Wade hadn’t bothered to ground his booby trap properly. Al sighed and tried to be thankful that she hadn’t been shocked in the process too. She made her way over to the bathroom and the semiconscious teenager. “I guess we know what the cuffs do. You alive kid?” 

“Ouch,” Peter groaned almost unintelligibly from the floor. 

“When you’re feeling up to it, come to kitchen. I’ll make you some tea.” 

Feeling up to it took more than a few minutes while Peter’s nerves remembered how to work again. He drug himself still shaky and occasionally twitching to the kitchen and sat at an old worn Formica table. A steaming blue cup appeared in front of him and Peter sniffed Al’s tea suspiciously. “Are you his accomplice?” Peter asked. “You work with this Deadpool guy?” 

Al laughed, a deep bellied chuckle. “No, I’m Deadpool’s original captive houseguest. Kid, the tea isn’t poisoned. Even if I was working against you, if Deadpool wanted you dead, he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to trap you. Yeah?” 

Peter took a tentative sip of the tea and then a longer one. “It’s good. Thank you.” 

“There are two rules of the house for guests. No escaping. No visitors.” Al couldn’t see the rebellious look on Peter’s face but she sighed anyway, certain that this kid had no idea how serious his situation could be. “Now, that probably sounds silly to you, but you need to understand a couple of things. Deadpool may not be planning to kill you, but he’s killed more folks on accident than most third world despots have on purpose. You said that shock earlier could have killed you. Deadpool would probably have been annoyed if that happened, might even have had to change whatever plan he has that you’re here for. 

“But he’d have composted your body where he puts the Jehovah’s Witnesses and he wouldn’t have thought of you again.” 

The memory of the electricity contracting his every muscle was still too fresh for Peter to disregard Al’s warning out of hand. “You could help me get out of here. We could escape together,” Peter said. 

“Eh, I escaped once, never again. You think that electrical shock was rough, Deadpool didn’t hurt me, didn’t torture me for my escape. He tortured my friend that I tried to run to, tortured him damn near to death. I’ve got quite enough on my soul without getting any more old friend’s bones broken or any kids sent to the compost heap.” 

* * *

May held her styrofoam cup of coffee with both hands and waited for the detective who deposited her in what had to be an interrogation room to come back. The officers had been able to tell her very little, mainly that Peter and Ned had been attacked. While Ned had been drugged and left behind, Peter had been taken. 

They had questioned her at the scene and again at the station, making her go through all Peter’s activities and friends, looking for a likely connection to explain what had happened. May answered their questions, unable to discuss Spider-Man and every aspect of her nephew’s life that most likely had caused this. The only reason she was able to hold it together and keep the lies straight was the certainty that Stark was on the case and most likely knew exactly who the masked freak that attacked the boys had been. 

When an Avenger finally showed up, it wasn’t Ironman. Colonel James Rhodes in a crisp military uniform came along with a pack of official papers, and he left with the case file on Peter’s abduction, all the evidence gathered at the scene and May Parker. 

They were barely out of the police station when May started questioning him. “What do you know? Who was that freak in the costume? Why did he come after Peter? Talk to me.” 

“We need to wait until we’re somewhere secure for details, Ms. Parker, but we identified him and we’re working on it.” Rhodey escorted her to their aircraft. 

May took a seat, only realizing she still had her old, cold cup of police station coffee when she needed her hands to operate the seatbelt. Rhodey took it from her with a polite gesture and brought her a fresh cup of coffee that based on smell wasn’t the same species of coffee bean as what the police used. As the engines fired up and the gentle push of g-force pushed them back in their seats, May started her questions again. “What can you tell me about my kid, Colonel Rhodes?” 

It wasn’t the first time Rhodey had had to give scary or incomplete news to emotionally charged family. Some of the enlisted men and women who went overseas weren’t a great deal older than this woman’s nephew, but Peter wasn’t a soldier and May wasn’t likely to be philosophical about what was happening. 

“We’re fairly sure that the person who took Peter was actually trying to get a reaction out of Tony or maybe the Avengers or maybe Stark Enterprises through Tony. Based on the limited communication we’ve had with the individual, he seems to know about Peter’s other activities related to the Avengers and that his primary point of contact has been through Stark.” Rhodes sighed, knowing that he was skating the line of how much information a civilian should have. “The individual didn’t come in with deadly force. He came in to capture and there is no reason to think Peter has been harmed at this stage. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what this guy wants and if he’s working for someone else.” 

“They kidnapped Peter to get Tony Stark’s attention. Of course,” May said. “I knew this had to be Spider-Man related but it’s not really. It’s Tony Stark related. If he had left Peter in Queens instead of dragging him into adult battles when he was just fifteen, this would never have happened.” 

Looking uncomfortable, Rhodey shrugged. “We don’t know enough to be sure. I guarantee that Tony is giving this his full attention and focusing all his resources on finding Peter.” 

“I want to hear it from him,” May snapped. 

“Of course, you’ll have your chance in about twenty minutes.” 

* * *

Moments before the lights shifted red and alarms starting blaring, Tony felt the hard, cool muzzle of a gun at the base of his skull. He could see the masked criminal and the portal he had entered through in the reflection of the monitors in from of him. “Boss, we have an intruder,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. announced unnecessarily. 

“Deadpool is it?” Today asked, forcing his voice to be light, even as his entire body became tense with adrenaline and anger. “I got your note yesterday. It was a little light on details. Why don’t you turn the kid loose and we’ll discuss whatever it is you want or need from me?” 

“The kid is safe where he is. I told you, he could come home once you’d cleaned house. Have you started, asshole? Cause it looks to me like you’re wasting time researching me.” Deadpool sighed then laughed to himself. “It doesn’t look like you want the bunny rabbit back at all. I can keep him indefinitely. I’ve got a live-in sitter and everything.” 

“This isn’t some kind of joke. You’ve got my attention. You want my house cleaned? Give me some more information. Is this house the Avengers or Stark Industries or something else? I know your elevator doesn’t go straight to the top so this may surprise you to hear, but your vague dramatic requests make no sense. What do you want?” Tony snapped. 

“I want justice, vengeance. I want you to fucking stop what you started, asshole. I find it hard to believe that a genius, billionaire visionary like you, DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’S DONE.” Deadpool snarled. He ground the barrel of the gun into Tony’s neck. “You know, I can’t tell if you’re playing stupid or if you really don’t understand me?” 

“I really don’t understand you,” Tony hissed. “Whatever I did, that’s between you and me. Explain it to me and maybe I can make it right. Did I sell a weapon to your enemy? Did I burn down your condo defending the world from aliens or killer robots? Maybe I slept with your girlfriend? I did a lot of fucking over the years. You tell me what I did and we’ll go from there.” 

“I don’t believe you really don’t know. Okay, I’ve got an idea. You want to prove to me that you want to make amends? Get the big guy out,” Deadpool ordered. At Tony’s blank stare he elaborated, punctuating his words with jabs of his gun. “Save Brucey Bruce, your big green friend, and maybe I’ll believe you might want to make shit right. For now, it’s probably time I checked on the bunny rabbit. I wonder if he’s tried to escape? Hope I didn’t leave the current too high.” Deadpool tapped his belt and vaulted through a portal that existed for only a moment before closing behind him. 

Tony sprang to his feet and paced to where the portal had been. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. did you get the tracker on him?” 

“Yes boss, searching for the G.P.S. signal now.” 

“Also, run a global facial recognition search for Bruce Banner.” Not searching too hard for Bruce had been a courtesy. If the man needed space, Tony hadn’t wanted to push him, but if he was somehow mixed up in whatever Deadpool had fixated on, it was time to set courtesy aside, make sure Bruce was okay and maybe finally get a clear answer about what was happening that had set the psycho after Tony and his associates. 


	3. Coo Coo Ca Choo

Over the course of the next few days, Peter and Al developed a rhythm. She prepared three square meals a day, good healthy, tasteless MREs and Peter explored the rats nest of a house while trying not to get himself electrocuted. He mostly succeeded. 

By the fourth day, there really wasn’t anything left to explore and the smattering of tools he had found were utterly useless at getting the metal cuffs off, so Peter set to work trying to fix Al’s television. Every day about ten in the morning she mentioned her show. If her show was something she looked forward to after years being a forced houseguest to a psychopath, then Peter could try to fix it for her. She seemed pretty firm in her decision not to help him escape, but maybe a good turn would change her mind? 

Peter took the guts from three broken televisions that he’d found amongst the clutter for spare parts and started tinkering. It was nice to get lost in the puzzle of fried electronics. He could almost forget that this wasn’t his bedroom, and he wasn’t patching together another of his dumpster-found treasures. Of the three busted sets, one had been shot and it had the most viable innards. With some better tools he might have been able to fix things pretty. As it was, the now working inside, didn’t completely fit in the old casing, so Peter wrapped the whole mess in a load of duct tape and with fingers crossed, turned the set on. 

When the television came on and didn’t immediately catch fire, Peter cheered. The picture was more than a little grainy and shifted up with a black bar down the middle, but Al was blind and the sound was coming through perfect. “I think I fixed it,” Peter announced. 

“Oh you are a brilliant boy,” Al said. “Where’s the clicker?” 

Peter handed her the remote that should work based on the sensor in the box. They sat together on the lumpy old couch and watched her show. Apparently Matlock reruns were her jam. As Peter had never seen a Matlock episode, it was all new to him. 

There wasn’t any great warning that the status quo was about to change. Al stiffened beside him and clicked off the television. “You remember what I said about not getting yourself killed?” she asked. The dull click of Deadpool’s portal had just sounded and while Peter heard it, he didn’t yet understand the significance. 

“I smell burnt hair,” Deadpool announced. “Ah, bunny rabbit, did you try to escape? Didn’t Al tell you not to do that?” 

Peter tried to follow Al’s advice, he really did, but when his adrenaline was up and a criminal was snarking off to him, Peter’s mouth developed a mind of its own. “What can I say, I have issues with authority when it comes to kidnappers and their colleagues—also, not a rabbit.” 

“Not a rabbit? But you have those big sad herbivore eyes, all helpless and innocent.” Deadpool tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I bet you’re vegan. Did he eat the meat in the MREs, Al? Enquiring minds want to know.” 

“Don’t be an ass. Did you bring dinner or would you like me to cook?” Al asked. “We have MREs and MREs and I think a couple of left over MREs.” Al headed for the kitchen, not sparing the mountain of muscle behind her any special attention. 

Peter stood, and moved to stand between Al and their captor. Maybe she had been riding this rollercoaster for years, but he didn’t like the idea of this man menacing the relatively nice old lady he had spent the better part of a week with. It was so much easier to stand up to people when he had his suit and could disappear into the anonymity and reputation of Spider-Man. God, but he felt small looking up into the masked face of the man Al had spent the better part of a week warning him about. “Look, you can’t just imprison people against their will. So, you should release me and Ms. Al immediately.” 

Deadpool slowly and deliberately poked Peter in the chest with his extended index finger. “Make me.” 

It was a bad idea, trying to fight the scary, muscled guy that had already successfully drugged and captured him once, but acting on bad ideas had gotten Peter pretty far in the grand scheme of his life so far. It was Deadpool’s territory and he didn’t even have his web-shooters, but Peter attacked, punching the big guy in what turned out to be rather hard abs and bounced onto the wall. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” 

“The bunny rabbit is going to hurt me.” Deadpool grinned manically. “You have a lot of lessons to learn while you’re here. The first one is that you don’t have the skills to hurt shit. You wander around Queens stopping muggings and rescuing lost tourists and think you’re prepared to fight me? I am a one man killing machine. You show me what you got. I want to see it.” 

“You asked for it.” _It_ wasn’t a long exhibition between them. Peter had been pretty sure he was doomed to failure from the moment he landed that first punch. Deadpool wasn’t just a strong, well-conditioned human; he was enhanced. Peter fought anyway. Deadpool let him bounce around and even let him get a shot or two in, then he attacked. Moving as fast if not faster than his quarry; he jerked Peter off the ceiling and pinned him to the ground with a knee in his chest. 

“You’re an idiot, but I like you. You’re going to be spending your summer here. It would be a shame to waste the time, so we’re going to work on getting your bunny rabbit ass into a more respectable fighting shape.” 

Panting, Peter shook his head. “This is insane. You kidnapped me and now you’re going to teach me better fighting moves? Thanks but no thanks. I’ve got loads of mentors in my life these days.” 

“Ah Peter, I don’t recall giving you a choice.” Deadpool patted him on the head. “You’re what we call a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Think of yourself as my toy, my very own action figure. Me and your favorite billionaire are probably going to be hashing things out for a while, what with him playing innocent, acting like he can’t understand my very concisely worded requests. I really hate that asshole.” 

Deadpool bounced to his feet, pulling Peter up with him. Lifting from the neck of his shirt like Peter was a rowdy kitten, he escorted his captive to the kitchen and deposited him in a chair. “I suppose formal introductions are in order. I’m Wade Wilson, more commonly known as Deadpool.” 

He kicked Al’s chair, making her jump. “Introduce yourself.” 

“It might surprise you to know that in the week he’s been here, I already introduced myself,” Al snapped. 

“Of course you did. What was I thinking?” Wade pulled his chair up to the table, rolled his mask up past his nose, and started shoveling his serving of dinner down. “I love meat in sauce with yellow stuff that is supposed to be macaroni.” 

Peter looked for a long moment at the ground beef consistency skin that had been hiding under Deadpool’s mask. It was bad manners to stare at or to bring up someone’s disfigurement. It was probably suicidal to do either of those things to Wade Wilson, so Peter stared at his food instead. Nursing his busted lip, he glanced between Al and Wade, acutely aware that the only person at this table that didn’t know his name and dual identity was his fellow captive. “I’m Peter Parker, less commonly known as Spider-Man.” 

“Got it,” Al said. “I’ll try to stop calling you kid but after a week, the habit may be stuck.” 

“My own fault if it is,” Peter said. With far less enthusiasm than Wade, he started eating his serving of the tasteless, indefinable food. 

“This is going to be so much fun,” Wade said around a mouth full of mystery meat. “It’s almost like having a puppy.” 

Al sighed, imaging that she could hear the teenager across the table bristling. She wished she could whisper to the kid that this was the best side of Deadpool, gleeful and manic. If he turned dark or brooding, he might forget that his teenage hostage had value and do something unfortunate, but there was no way for her to explain any better than she already had. “As if you ever owned a dog,” Al deflected resolutely. 

“Just cause I didn’t keep the pet alive long enough to prove it, doesn’t mean I never owned a dog.” Wade leaned across the table, blocking his face from Peter with a hand and stage whispered to Al. “Don’t undermine me in front of the bunny rabbit.” 

* * *

Tony’s workspace had never been particularly tidy. An idea would spur him to redecorate with a few gigajoule laser array that would perhaps not be cleared away until he needed room for his new experimental Ironman thrusters. Recently one of the walls had gained a unique collection of artwork. Looking at the colorful drawings and notes sketched in crayon, it would almost seem that Tony had the work of a grade school class on his wall, at least until you started reading the notes. 

Deadpool had proved harder to track than Tony had planned on. His surreptitiously placed G.P.S. tag had not gone as unnoticed as he’d assumed, or maybe the field generated by his unusual transportation system had fried the components. Over the course of a week, Wade Wilson had literally peppered Tony with sarcastic, taunting notes. He had left a get well card for Ned Leeds at the hospital, a thank you note to May Parker for the loan of her nephew. He even sent Pepper a birthday card. Each message was hand drawn, full of profanity and incomprehensible allusions. 

The only positive to all the messages was that Tony had accumulated some significant data on the strange, almost-teleportation device the mercenary employed. 

“All right F.R.I.D.A.Y. run it with me. There is a minute burst of neutron radiation when his wormhole opens. If we commandeer those D.O.D. satellites that are wasting time watching China and set them to scanning for that particular wavelength of radiation, we might be able to get an idea of his base of operations,” Tony said. “What are the odds we can repurpose those satellites temporarily and not get run in for treason?” 

“Very low boss.” 

“Yeah, I guess we could ask permission, but we’ll need a good cover story.” Tony paced over to his now cool coffee and took a long drink of it anyway. Not staying in one place for more than a few moments, he moved back to the wall of crazy-man correspondence. Unconscious of the frenetic grace to his pacing, Tony’s mind worried at the problem of Deadpool and the mystery of what he had done to anger the psychopath. 

Not being directly responsible for the death or permanent damage of any unreasonably heroic teenagers was starting to look like an unattainable life goal. Assuming Peter survived his sojourn with Deadpool, he was likely already traumatized if not physically then psychologically. “He survives then I’ll pay for a shrink,” Tony muttered under his breath. 

“Per Colonel Rhodes request, I need to remind you that it has been forty-eight hours since you last slept, boss.” 

“First we defraud the D.O.D. then while the satellites scan, I’ll catch a nap. Who do we know at the D.O.D. that’s gullible?” Tony crunched his paper coffee cup and tossed it in a neat parabolic arc that completely missed the trash can. 

“Our Department of Defense contacts are not listed with integer values relating to gullibility. The Stark Industry satellites that we repurposed to search for Bruce Banner haven’t made any progress. We could repurposed them again without committing treason.” 

“Key phrase there is that they haven’t made any progress. You could argue that after a week scanning, they aren’t likely to find that green blip of gamma radiation we’re looking for, but Banner might know what this psychopath actually wants.” Being locked in a hostage crisis with a man so crazy he couldn’t seem to properly request the ransom he wanted, officially qualified as the simultaneously most terrifying and frustrating situation in Tony’s adult life. “We’re not repurposing those satellites. Display a list of D.O.D contacts. I’ll pick the gullible one.” 

* * *

It wasn’t that Peter didn’t believe Deadpool when he said he was going to train him, he just got the impression that his captor was a bit easily distracted. Something else shiny would catch his attention and Peter would spend another uneventful week with Al, watching Matlock on the repaired TV, leaving him plenty of time to look for a viable escape plan. Aunt May had to be worried out of her mind. 

A light doze was the best sleep he could manage on the old couch, while his brain was on high alert for whatever might happen next. When Deadpool set off an airhorn next to his exposed ear, Peter literally jumped to the ceiling and clung there. “Are you trying to deafen me?” Peter gasped, covering the offended ear with a hand. 

“Don’t be a baby.” Wade unsheathed his swords and brandished them with a wide grin. “We’re going to work on cardio today. I call this game, don’t lose a limb. Ready?” 

“No?” Peter answered. It seemed that the question was more rhetorical than literal as Wade came running at him swinging his rather sharp looking weapons. The close quarters in the cluttered home both worked for and against Peter. It made it hard for Deadpool to swing his swords properly, but there were only so many places to run that wouldn’t get him electrocuted. 

It became clear pretty quickly as Peter scampered that losing limbs wasn’t actually an outcome Deadpool intended. Scraped, slightly skewered, and bruised were all on the table. When he was forced to flee to a exterior wall to dodge a swing and experienced electrical restraint Deadpool-style for the seventh time in a relatively short period of time, Peter hoped that all this electroshock wasn’t scrambling his brains before losing consciousness altogether. 

When Peter came around, he was lying on the lumpy couch, his head resting on what appeared to be Al’s lap while the theme song to Matlock played in the background. “Morning kid. Let me finish my show and I’ll fix something to eat. You just lie there and get your bearings.” 

“Is he still here,” Peter asked quietly. 

“He isn’t far. Deadpool is building you a training box, a place that he can work with you that’s secure but that won’t result in quite so much interruption from the shock-restraints. He’s worried you won’t learn anything if he electroshocks the memories out of you.” 

Al patted him on the head fondly and Peter hated her a little. She accepted her role as captive in some massive Stockholm Syndrome nightmare and had precious little perspective for what was happening to him it seemed sometimes. “I have a family that has to be worried, that needs me. I have friends to miss me. Please help me get out of here before that maniac gets annoyed with his new toy and breaks it. Please?” Peter completely missed the soft click of Deadpool’s portal but he felt the tingle of his spider-sense and cut himself off mid-plea. 

“Oh bunny rabbit, I thought begging would be beneath you. I’m disappointed. You really don’t want to be disappointing me on our first day training. Apologize,” Wade ordered. 

Peter managed to regain his feet and respond on as close to eye level as the two were capable of at their respective statures. “Sorry, not sorry.” 

“Oh you bastard, quoting vile pop songs at me? That is it—the last straw. Deadpool pulled out one of his handguns and rested it directly on Peter’s forehead.” He turned to the wall and addressed it as though someone else was there and talking to him. “You really think I should give him another chance? You may have a point. It’s not like he quoted New Kids on the Block or started dancing disco. It’s just, how do I respect him after that?” 

Deadpool shoved his gun back in its holster and leaned close so that they were basically nose to nose. “You get one more chance. I think we should work on your healing factor a bit. See if a little exercise can get it up to speed, yeah? It may hurt a little, but no pain no gain, am I right?” 

“That’s not how healing factors work,” Peter whispered, wishing he had listened better to Al’s warnings that Deadpool might kill him on a whim. The cool gun muzzle against his skin had brought that reality into crystal clear focus. 

“Oh bunny rabbit, I’m an expert on healing factors and yours is capable of learning. I taught it quite a few things back in the day. Or is it forward in the day? Time travel makes everything so fucking complicated sometimes.” 


	4. Moment of Clarity

From the outside looking in, it would be easy to assume that Al had lost her mind a little in her time under Deadpool’s care. There were documented cases of prisoners coming to sympathize with their captors. The phenomenon even had its own name in the Manual of Mental Disorders, but this wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome and she wasn’t any flavor of crazy. She was an old women who had done some bad things in her life. Women and men who did the work she had done didn’t often live to be old. They didn’t get to stop and think about the red in their ledger and wonder if the black would ever balance it out. 

Being Deadpool’s prisoner started out terrifying and painful, with regular visits to the original box, a maze of sharp surfaces and dangerous traps. Over time she stopped trying so hard to escape and she got to know the maniac sharing her space. Wade Wilson wasn’t a good man, he was too broken for that. He lived by his own code and he would do almost anything. But he didn’t hurt people that didn’t to his mind deserve it, and he only killed people that crossed certain Deadpool-specific lines (or that he got paid a lot for). Sometimes that line was as simple as working for the wrong person, but it made sense to him. It held him back from becoming truly monstrous. 

Keeping her here, alive but still punished for what she’d done, seemed to satisfy something in him. On some strange level they had become friends and the darkly dangerous times spread farther and farther apart until Al had decided that helping Deadpool not be the monster he could be was meant to be her golden years project. Some retired people took up gardening or joined a bridge club. Al became Deadpool’s prisoner and family and friend. She became a buffer that helped keep him more sane. 

What he was doing to Peter Parker fell so far out of character, that Al didn’t know what to do. Wade Wilson did not hurt children, even the ones that to his mind kind of deserved it. He most definitely didn’t torture them. Every day he took Peter to the training box he’d built and came back with an unconscious bloody mess. She couldn’t see the wounds, but she could smell the coppery horror and she could hear the silence. Peter was getting quieter and quieter, almost like a ghost of the kid who fixed her television and smarted off to his captor despite her repeated warnings that Deadpool could be dangerously unpredictable. 

The kid healed fast, not quite Deadpool fast, but it was still impressive. Survival wasn’t all about physical wounds and Al knew she had to intervene somehow. She had come at the problem obliquely, pushing Deadpool to try and get him to talk to her, to change gears, to just stop, but tonight when the pattern repeated, Al resigned herself to changing gears herself and doing what she had warned Peter would be a mistake. 

“What is your problem, Deadpool? Are you trying to break the kid? What did this scrawny little teenager do to deserve this?” Resolutely swallowing her fear, Al crossed her arms over her chest and did her best Jimminy Cricket impersonation. “In the years we’ve known one another, torturing children never came up. Were you just waiting for the right opportunity? I mean torturing random hydra agents that cross your path, fine. Did I say anything about what you did to the telemarketer that kept calling at all hours? But a kid?” 

“I’m not torturing the kid. I’m preparing him.” He brushed past her, making the noises of their life together, rummaging in the fridge for a beer, scraping the chair back over the linoleum and popping open the can with a hissing fizz. “Enhanced kid like that is going to be a commodity, and he is going to get picked up eventually. If he goes in all herbivorous without any sharp teeth, he won’t survive long. He didn’t when I knew him.” 

You could have knocked her over with a feather Al was so surprised at the calm response. Neither gleeful and manic or dark and brooding, this was the very rarely seen calm and cognizant Deadpool. She had had a conversation with him only once before that had hit this tone and it hadn’t lasted long. He almost never wanted to discuss anything real, like the time travel that stranded him in the seventies but Al felt that he might want to right now if she just said the right thing. “So you knew Peter in the future, for real? This isn’t torture it’s altruism? Just so we’re clear, I don’t think the kid is going to see it that way.” 

“You get stranded that far in the past, I sort of thought I’d be long dead before catching back up to time, to things that I knew were going to happen. Fucking healing factor.” He took a long slow drink, crushed the empty can, and tossed it into the corner. He popped another can open without missing a beat. “The plan was not to kidnap the bunny rabbit. I was stalking him to find the Shop because I knew he would be picked up soon. Hunting down every scientist that contributed to that horror show was my favorite hobby in my time and getting a chance to kill them all again, it just seemed like something fun to do.” 

“Man has got to have a hobby.” Al didn’t try to quibble with Wade over the ethics of killing people who hadn’t committed the sins he hated them for yet. “If kidnapping Peter wasn’t the plan, why is he here?” 

“I never was completely sure if Stark needed killing, not in the future and not now. He signed the fucking Sokovia Accords and doesn’t that just say everything? I should just kill him for that and be done with it.” Wade drained his current beer and popped open another. 

Why Stark’s innocence or guilt mattered enough for Deadpool to scrap plan A and kidnap Peter was a mystery that maybe he felt like sharing tonight? It wasn’t like he needed a good excuse to kill the man if he felt like it. Wade had killed men and women for downright silly, superfluous things before. As a war profiteer, Tony Stark was responsible for more human suffering than most. Granted, he’d cleaned his act up recently. 

Maybe it was because the scientists of the Shop were a specially hated group for Deadpool? Those men and women had literally stripped away his humanity, modifying his body and damaging his mind until all that remained was a simple deadly and dangerous creature that barely bore any resemblance to whomever he had been before? Deadpool had described his treatments there in gory detail at various times during her confinement. “How does taking Peter help you figure out Stark’s complicity?” 

“I thought I’d be able to tell when I left my ultimatum, but he either really doesn’t know about the Shop, or he is a fucking good actor. So I set him the job of finding the Shop for me since I’d kidnapped Peter before the goon squad could. They’ve already got big green. Stark can take care of the imprisoned when he finds them, and I’ll kill the assholes that set it up.” Deadpool sucked down the rest of his six pack and went to the fridge for another. 

“So, are we pretending that your healing factor is going to let you get drunk today?” Al asked. “Seems a waste of good beer.” 

“As if I ever wasted money on good beer. This is terrible beer and I added a little something so, yeah, I’ll be getting drunk today, don’t you worry.” Wade stumbled a step on his way back to the table. 

The last time he added a little something to his beer, he had poisoned himself into a three day coma, but Al didn’t try to stop him. “If you’ve decided not to kill Stark and have a plan to deal with the Shop, why not return Peter now?” 

“Cause he’s too soft. I watched the Shop skin the bunny rabbit alive and I want him to fucking bite the fingers off the next asshole that tries something like that on him. Once he learns how to bite, I’ll cut him loose.” 

Al was so focused on Deadpool that she almost missed Peter moving quietly into the kitchen. “Are you really from the future?” Peter asked. “You keep insinuating that you are, that you knew me, but how is that possible?” 

“And the kid wats to talk quantum physics.” Deadpool waved him over to the table and pulled a black marker out of his belt. “I dropped out of school so I can’t show you the math that makes it all work, but in a nutshell you had Cable (asshole I was trying to kill for a contract).” Deadpool drew a stick man with a frowning face and a big gun right on the table top. “He had a quantum gravity device that he was planning to travel to the past with. I had just started burying my favorite katana in his overly muscled chest when the device sent him to the past and drug me down a fucking rabbit hole to the seventies. Bell bottoms, BeeGees, it was Hell, but I didn’t have a way forward except to live it.” Deadpool drew a relatively nice rendition of himself with an Afro and bell bottoms. 

“And you knew me from this Shop? You said they skinned me alive. Who are they? Why would they do that?” Peter asked. 

“They were building soldiers, very patriotic really. You weren’t human to them so to their mind you weren’t even collateral damage, just a failed test subject. They burned you in the furnace, with the other laboratory waste.” Deadpool offered Peter one of his beers. “It’s got a little extra poison in it, but you have enough healing factor to survive one or two and it will stimulate your healing factor to pay attention to poisons. Drink it, go on.” 

Peter accepted the can of Wild Blue, blueberry lager, and took a slow sip of the foul tasting liquid. What would Mr. Stark say to him sitting at a table and drinking a beverage that he knew was poisoned with his kidnapper? What would May say? “Why is your beer poisoned?” Peter asked. 

“Your baby healing factor will be able to protect you from one or two cans of my special beers. My healing factor is so good at protecting me from poison that if I don’t add something good and deadly to the brew I can’t even get a buzz. Alcohol is poison you know. Just poison.” Deadpool downed two more beers in rapid succession, then struggled to get the next one open. 

“I think you may have had enough,” Al said. 

“Yer not the bossa me,” Deadpool slurred before falling out of his chair. 

Peter set his hardly touched beverage on the table and scrubbed at his lips that had become numb with just a couple of sips. “Are you awake? Hello?” He crouched next to Deadpool and considered trying to steal the technology on his belt to either escape his cuffs or even generate one of those instant exit portals that the mercenary used to get around. Before he could decide what to attempt, one of Deadpool’s hands shot out, grabbed Peter by the back of the neck and pulled him close. Like a human-sized teddy bear he tucked Peter under his arm, pinning him in place. “In the Shop, you were a right good bro to me, talked to me when they had pulled me apart. I tried to talk to you when they pulled you apart but you were gone. Gone gone gone. Bunny rabbits don’t survive, but we’ll fix you.” 

Peter tried to squirm out of Deadpool’s iron grip but he just held on tighter the harder Peter fought. “I can’t breathe. Let go.” 

“Peter relax,” Al said. “You relax and he’ll relax. When he passes all the way out you slip free and get away from him. Semiconscious Deadpool is extremely dangerous. He’s a ball of instincts and his go to is disembowel.” 

Making himself take slow, shallow breaths, Peter stopped fighting. It took a few long moments but Deadpool’s grip slowly relaxed and Peter was able to take a proper breath again. He waited until soft snores were just audible from under Deadpool’s mask, then Peter slipped carefully away from him. 

Pulling his chair as far away from the snoring madman as the kitchen would allow, Peter sat with his knees pulled up to his chin. “Was all that true that he said? Is he really from the future? Did he really watch me die in some Mengele-style horror-hospital?” 

“Probably? Mostly?” Al sighed. “It might all be a delusion, but I think it’s the truth as he remembers it.” 

“I’m supposed to be in chemistry camp and physics camp this summer. I’m supposed to be learning the math that would explain things like quantum gravity.” Peter realized that he was shaking and bit his fist to make himself stop. “I think the best way out of here is to show Deadpool that I’m not a bunny rabbit.” He looked at Al, and nodded though she couldn’t see the gesture. “I’m really not a bunny rabbit. I’ve done things. I had a fight, mid-plane crash at like ten thousand feet on the outside of the plane. I walked away and I got the bad guy. I fought Captain America and didn’t embarrass myself. Not a bunny rabbit.” 

“I think that’s a good plan, kid. Let me get you some food and then you can get some sleep. Things won’t feel so overwhelming in the morning. Yeah?” 

* * *

It wasn’t a lucky satellite scan that produced the first clue on Bruce Banner’s location. Tony was elbow deep in the mainframe, tweaking the security protocols to try and trap Deadpool the next time he made the mistake of popping into the Avengers’ facility when he found the breach. The program running in the background was well made, subtle. It was efficiently recording his every keystroke and one file at a time, copying his mainframe. Careful not to disrupt the program and alert its owner that it had been discovered, Tony started isolating the program from the truly sensitive areas of the system. 

With finesse and skill he backtracked the program’s thefts and the loss was staggering. It had successfully downloaded security protocols and hundreds of documents. Most damning, it had secured documents detailing the experiments they had performed on Bruce and his big green alter ego. Containment protocols and cocktails of drugs to best control him and his transformation. 

This type of breach wasn’t possible from an external computer. Someone had to walk in the building and install this sinister little piece of spyware. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. do you see what I see? How did that avoid your notice?” 

“My apologies, boss. It has to have been brought in under the firewalls and it was placed in my blind spot. Would you like me to scrub it?” 

“No, no, we need to follow it to its leader. I think we may have the first sign of that dirty house Deadpool was ranting about. There is a mole in this building. I want to know who. F.R.I.D.A.Y. are you in the mood for a scavenger hunt?” 

“Always boss.” 


	5. Pick Your Poison

Some battles are won with blasters and missiles and automatic weapons. When Tony finally uncovered the mess he had been set to unravel, he would have liked to go in as Ironman and pound his enemy into submission, but the enemy was not the small group of military women and men manning the secret subterranean base filled with unlawfully detained civilians. The enemy was wearing a three piece suit and drinking fine liquors on capital hill. If he flew in as Ironman and cleaned house once, he was leaving the real problem to start again somewhere else. 

So Tony took a moment to compose himself then he called in a specialist. “Pepper, I need your help.” 

“If I had a dollar for every time I heard that from you,” Pepper said. 

“You’d be a wealthy woman? Yeah, I know. Can you come up or should I fly down?” Tony paced to an Ironman suit. 

“No, don’t even think about it. I’m in Spain as if you didn’t know, and I can’t come home until after the trade conference. Ironman blasting the shutters off with his loud jet boosters is not the ugly American look I’m going for here. Can I help over the phone?” Pepper asked. “Is this about the crazy guy that sent me the weird birthday card?” 

“Sort of and yeah, over the phone is doable. This line is secure, right?” Tony asked. With the security issues they’d been having between Deadpool and spyware, he had to ask. 

“Yes, boss,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. answered. 

“So I found a spy program in the Avengers’ computer system and traced it back to one of our I.T. guys, Greg.” Tony paced to the bar and poured himself a drink of straight gin. “Now Greg, turned out not to be much of a spy and he spilled the beans on his other employer, our friend, Secretary Ross after just a little questioning. Gregory seemed to think I was being silly getting up in arms over a little friendly spying. Apparently, espionage between peace keeping agencies is like good personal hygiene, everyone who’s sane does it.” 

“Good personal hygiene? Greg’s funny. They can’t do that without a warrant, and a warrant has to be filed even if it isn’t served. Call legal and they can determine if this was legal or illegal. We can go from there.” Pepper knew deep down that Tony hadn’t called her before taking some action, but she could hope and pretend that he asked her advice before committing treason or whatever he had done in response to this. 

“Yeah, already called legal and there was no filed warrant. Now before you get very upset with me, I’ve got a maniac sending people crazy letters and kidnapping teenagers, so getting to the bottom of things required some expediting. So if hypothetically, I set up my own virtual spy network and placed a couple of technically illegal wire taps, that would be a reasonable tit for tat.” 

Pepper didn’t answer right away, finally sighing deeply. “Tony, even if what you just said didn’t have the adjective illegal in it, you have to know better than to do something like this. The Avengers aren’t a sovereign country or a government agency. Whatever the FBI does to the CIA and vice versa is not the same here. The team of attorneys that tried to define the Avengers ended up filing 501(c) paperwork and hoping for the best. You could go to jail if you wiretapped a government agency. Tell me we’re still in the planning, hypothetical stage of this plan and you’re not calling me from lockup?” 

Tony leaned back in his chair, oddly comforted by the worry and exasperation in his on again off again (currently on) girlfriend’s voice. “Sorry, I’ve already racked up a few felonies, but I’ve not been caught so they don’t count. Pepper, they’ve got over a hundred citizens unlawfully detained. No due process, no warrants filed, at least not where I can find them and I looked places I’m not allowed. They’ve got Bruce and they’re keeping him green and drugged with one of the chemical cocktails that they pulled from my hard drive.” Saying it made him angry all over again, and he kicked a trash can that had the misfortune to be in his way, strewing paper from one corner of the lab to the other. 

“Do not get in your Ironman suit and go bust those people out. Give me two days to get enough legal information to act. This isn’t North Korea. When we expose what’s happening, the American people won’t stand for it.” 

Tony frowned as Dum-E picked up his mess laboriously, one piece of paper at a time in the background. “But you’re in Spain for another week?” 

“No, I’ll be home in a few hours. Just don’t commit any more felonies until I can get there.” 

* * *

An entire arsenal of guns, from tiny handguns all the way up to assault rifles were arranged neatly next to their ammunition and a set of cleaning supplies. Standing over them doing a passable imitation of a school marm, Deadpool described each gun listing pros and cons. “Today you too will become a gun owner, bunny rabbit. Don’t bother pretending you have any experience with them. I know you don’t,” Deadpool said. 

“I don’t do guns. Thanks but no thanks. My webs make a good, non-lethal projectile.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head for emphasis. Things had changed a bit between them since the night Deadpool drank himself insensate. Peter worked hard to show how competent he could be in a fight and to learn anything Deadpool deigned to teach him, and Deadpool stopped short of pounding his brains out his ears every night to prove he wasn’t there yet. 

“Said like a real rabbit there, Peter. Pick a gun, any gun, and it’s yours. I’ll teach you to care for it and shoot it and then you’ll name it. There’s nothing like a boy and his gun, especially his first.” He pushed the assault rifle forward an inch and using a falsetto, whispered voice sang, “Pick me, pick me.” 

“No, I can’t. Can we just move on?” Peter asked. 

“I don’t think we can.” Deadpool efficiently took one of the handguns apart, cleaned it, reassembled it, and loaded it. He extended the weapon smoothly so that it pointed at Peter’s face. “People are going to use guns on you, whether you ever use them in the world yourself. Understanding them as a weapon will help keep you alive and while you’re here, you will carry and care for one of these weapons, or don’t you ever want to go home?” 

“Look my Uncle Ben was shot and killed by a mugger. I can’t use a gun. It would dishonor him. I won’t do it,” Peter said. “If you keep me here forever, I’m not budging.” 

“A liberal, gun-control rabbit? Fuck me. You know it was the mugger that killed your uncle, not the gun, right? Fine. I can compromise.” Deadpool put away the guns and pulled out an impressive array of edged weapons. “We have swords, knives, machetes, and my personal favorites, katanas. Choose.” 

As much as he wanted to refuse twice, Peter decided to accept the compromise for the miracle it was and picked a set of small daggers. “How about these?” 

“Good choice, those can be deadly if you know where to stick them and can serve as a projectile in a pinch though the balance could be better for throwing. Let’s learn how to do surgery.” 

For the next few hours, Deadpool taught Peter the care and maintenance of his new weapons, He taught him different grips and how to throw the daggers. Once they were through the basics, Deadpool took paint and started marking spots on his body in red yellow and blue. He pointed to one of the red spots. “This is a kill spot, no bones to protect and the kidney is right here. It you slide in here under the ribs, you’ll hit the liver, another solid kill spot. Everyone wants to go for the heart but with the sternum and the ribs, unless you have skill to slip it between the bones or the brute strength to smash through the bone, it’s just almost impossible, also, you might break your blade.” He pointed to a spot on his thigh then his knee. “Good arteries there and there, oh and if you’ve got the aim and the angle, that blade is prefect to slip between the atlanto-occipital joint for an instant kill.” Deadpool indicated the spot at the base of his skull. 

Peter took in the red kill spots, the yellow wound spots and the blue, too boney to be reasonably useful spots. He wasn’t surprised when Deadpool set a new game or even that it involved the new knives, but asking Peter to stab him in as many kill spots as possible was crazy even for him. “I’m not going to kill you.” 

“No, you aren’t, but you’re going to learn what it feels like to put that knife in flesh.” Deadpool pointed to the liver kill spot. “Like you mean it.” 

“I can’t,” Peter said. 

“Then you’re never going home.” Deadpool shrugged. He picked up a katana and stabbed himself in the kidney in a quick, firm motion. “I can’t die kid. Take the learning experience. Get a feel for it.” When Peter didn’t start stabbing, Deadpool changed tactics. “I fucking kidnapped you; beat the Hell out of you every day of your summer vacation. It could be argued that I’ve tortured you, and you won’t even fucking stick me? I shouldn’t be surprised. You know what baby bunnies do when they’re threatened? They freeze.” 

“I’m not a rabbit.” Drawing himself up, Peter adjusted his grip and he stabbed the spot for the liver. The knife bounced off without going in at all. 

“Good, try again but use that point and come at it with more force. There is some Kevlar in the weave of the suit. I’ll let you have a go with less protection later.” Deadpool tapped the target again, apparently not even woozy from stabbing himself earlier. “Show me some teeth.” 

* * *

It takes a smart man to know when he doesn’t know the answer to a question and Tony knew calling in Pepper was the right thing, but it aggravated him to wait and listen to lawyers argue. Drugged into a stupor and just waiting for rescue, Bruce probably wasn’t aware enough to wonder where his good friends had gotten off to instead of helping him. The unknown aspect of what was happening with Peter was harder to think about. Once the situation was handled and Peter was out of the middle of things, Tony intended to exhaust his entire efforts on the capture and detainment of Deadpool.

Across the conference room, things seemed to be heating up between Pepper and Jeffrey, the attorney she had brought with her. 

“This would never stand up to judicial review. They pulled the justification from the Sokovia Acords, subsection seven part g, _enhanced humans acting without supervision can be equivalated to terrorists._ They extrapolated the document beyond its intended scope and applied it to the general public. If you start calling enhanced humans terrorists just because they haven’t joined the Avengers or some other lawful peacekeeping organization it’s a constitutional quagmire that no judge in their right mind would uphold,” Jeffrey argued, rather passionately for a skinny blond kid in a thousand dollar suit. 

“We’ve got to find a legal means to make this public. Mr. Stark would rather not spend the next ten years at Leavenworth so how do we get around the Patriot Act and basic intelligence protocol to get this to a judge?” Pepper asked. 

“You don’t have a legal recourse. Once they were designated terrorists, the citizens in question lost the right to due process. It’s not a crime to keep them detained and off the grid indefinitely until you get the court to tell the government they’ve overstepped. Unfortunately all the documentation goes dark, immune to the freedom of information act, and we can’t get the court to help because all the documents that show they should are classified. It’s a catch 22, if we could legally know what we know, then there would be a legal recourse, but there is no legal way to acquire the information at this time. With that, I really should be going. I don’t think there’s anything else meaningful that I can add to the discussion.” 

“Of course, you have a quarterly income meeting to get to.” Pepper shook the attorney’s hand. “Thanks for consulting on this Jeffrey. I know it’s an ethical gray area.” 

“Gray? Oh this is a red area. I should be calling the police and reporting myself and both of you for this one, but you pay me enough that I’ll overlook a little treason in a good cause. Good luck, and for the record, I wasn’t here.” 

Tony quirked an eyebrow at Pepper as the elevator dinged shut on Jeffrey. “How much exactly are we paying him that he’s down with a little treason? He’s twelve.” 

“A lot but he’s good. He wrote the 501(c) paperwork for the Avengers.” Pepper dropped into the seat next to Tony and frowned. “There isn’t a legal way forward with what we have, but I have an idea that might work.” 

“I’m all ears.” Riding low in his chair, Tony slowly rotated toward her. 

“Whistle blower. We need a Snowden to commit the treason and get us the documents.” Pepper leaned forward. “I mean, you already went in, got what you needed and covered your tracks on the way out. They can’t trace the data breach back to you, right? So we fake an anonymous hack and leak the documents. Send them to the alphabet soup, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, print media too, everyone including the Avengers. Second wave, we send a copy to the Senators and Congressmen, the Cabinet and the President. Anyone not named directly in the documents is going to be quick to condemn what happened here, I’m almost certain, whether they were actually involved or not.” 

“I like the plan. Greg is a loose end. He might point the finger back at me, but it would incriminate him for illegal espionage. Also, we would have to move fast to release the citizens before anyone higher up could feasibly move their transgressions.” Tony actually smiled. “I’ve missed Bruce. It’ll be good to see him. Hopefully he’s okay.” 

“And your friend, the Spider-kid, I hope he’s okay too,” Pepper squeezed Tony’s hand. 

“Peter’s tough,” Tony said, “and if the psychopath has harmed him in any way, he’ll live to regret it.” 

* * *

Looking more like a character out of a horror film than anything, Peter wiped the blood off his face from the enthusiastic spurting of Deadpool’s carotid artery. It had taken some time and practice, but he had a good feel for how to make the knife go where he wanted, how to get it through the tough fabric of Deadpool’s suit then through the skin and muscle and tough fibrous wall of an artery. 

“That wasn’t a bunny rabbit stabbing. That had teeth.” Deadpool had applied a moment’s pressure but the bleeding only lasted seconds. He leaned against the wall, staring at Peter’s blood covered face and hands and clothes. He sighed. “I guess that’s enough for today.” 

Peter held onto his knives and followed Deadpool through the portal his belt generated. Acutely aware of the overwhelming coppery smell that had to have hit Al, he raked a bloody hand through his sticky hair. “I should get cleaned up,” Peter said. He slipped into the less than private bathroom and paused to look at himself in the shattered mirror. A hundred grotesquely distorted bloody reflections stared back at him and Peter wished he could just go home, but would May or Ned or Mr. Stark recognize the blood-covered, knife-wielding wild thing in that mirror. 

“Clean clothes,” Al announced. She dropped an orange sweat suit just inside the door, apparently pleased that Peter was moving of his own power for another night after Deadpool’s ministrations, reeking of blood or not. 

Peter stripped away the disgusting clothes and climbed into the shower while the water was still running cold. He managed to rinse away most of the evidence of the day, but somehow blood had seeped under the cuffs on his arms and Peter couldn’t get the cuffs clean. His acute nose couldn’t be fooled by appearances. Eventually giving up, Peter pulled on the orange sweats and made his way back to the kitchen looking for food. 

Without really thinking about it, he stowed the set of six razor sharp knives in their leather sheathes into the baggy sweats’ pockets. Deadpool seemed to be having a dinner conversation with one of the walls, not a terribly unusual situation. Peter pulled his seat and plate closer to Al and dug into his meal, hunger overriding anything else he was feeling in the moment. 

“Things are happening again out in the world. I’m going to be away for a few days. Stark got off his ass and is about to deconstruct the Shop like I asked him to,” Deadpool offered suddenly. 

“That’s great, but how do you know what he’s doing and when? You changed the past so it’s not future knowledge,” Peter asked, not expecting a real answer. 

“Trade secret, kid. Hand over the knives. I’ll show you how to hone the edge properly.” Using a leather strap, he ran the knife over the surface in long steady strokes. “You do the next one.” 

Peter quickly finished his meal, then slid over to emulate Deadpool’s motions. Peter sharpened one of the knives silently. For the first time, Peter felt strangely sorry for the dangerously broken man beside him correcting his sharpening technique. In his own way, Deadpool had just played the hero, saving Peter from a fate he hadn’t seen coming in the Shop, teaching him how to protect himself from the next bad situation that came his way. Peter half smiled when Deadpool approved his knife and set to work on the next one. “The Shop is going down this weekend, huh? I’m glad. Will you send me home after that?” 

“Probably, if I don’t kill you before then.” Deadpool looked at Al and gestured dramatically at Peter though she couldn’t see his theatrics. “He’s pro-gun control. I tried to give him my favorite assault rifle, Winona, and the kid turned his nose up. I’m not sure why I wasted so much time trying to teach him to not be a rabbit. It’s what he is.” 

Peter recognized the current outrageous statements as teasing. There was a tone to Deadpool when he was about to kill you and this wasn’t it. Al had claimed it was easy to hear when you knew him well, and it seemed she was right. “You could try to kill me,” Peter said. “You’ll probably succeed, but you’ll have a harder time today than you would have yesterday.” Without taking time to think about what he was doing, Peter took the knife he was sharpening and launched himself behind Deadpool. Poking just hard enough that he could feel the knife through his suit and know that Peter had hit the right spot. Peter didn’t drive the blade into the atlanto-occipital joint. He stepped back, collected his knives and headed to bed. 

“Kids grow up so fast. Bastard already outgrew his nickname,” Deadpool said, fondly. 


	6. To the Bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies on the delay. Had some health challenges and lost my writing groove when I finally made it home.

It wasn’t exactly a new game for Tony, playing to the media. His love hate relationship with journalists over the years had taught him how to tango, sometimes a little too literally. Today Pepper would technically be leading the dance. With some carefully worded tips to a handful of trusted media contacts, it hadn’t taken much to make sure the anonymous leak would be treated with less skepticism than most anonymous information. Early Friday morning, all the major news networks had broken the internment scandal as someone had coined it early on. 

Inside his suit, Tony could hear Pepper talking to a room full of media, spinning the story they agreed on, preparing them for what he and Vision had already confirmed was waiting inside the subterranean military base just beneath them. 

They were about to break into an actual U.S. military base and were not planning to spend any time in jail afterwards. Pepper saw the loophole they were exploiting almost immediately. After _receiving their anonymous_ information leak, the Avengers submitted a Request for Action through the accords council (excluding the U.S. representative) and received majority approval without a hiccup. Under sanction of the Sokovia Accords, the Avengers were investigating the unlawful detention of U.S. citizens outside Mesa Arizona, **perfectly legally.**

“The Avengers received the same anonymous cache of information that you all have been reporting about since early this morning. Rest assured that Ironman is personally investigating the situation and if there is any validity to these outrageous claims, the situation will be handled in a calm, lawful manner. As we speak, Ironman and Vision are inspecting the facility described in the released documents and I’d like to provide access to Ironman’s helmet camera so that all of you can watch his visual inspection and judge for yourselves.” 

“Ready for your closeup, Vision? F.R.I.D.A.Y. is taking us live in ten seconds.” Tony gestured for Vision to lead the way forward. A green light went on and Tony started talking, more to inform their television audience than anything. “We’re going to ask politely for admittance and if we meet resistance, we’re going use some basic non-lethal infiltration and restraint techniques.” 

Surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly, the guards stood down when faced with two Avengers and let Tony and Vision enter with only a call to their commanding officer. Vision scouted ahead, phasing through walls and locating the detained civilians. Per Tony’s request, he found the most mundane, innocent looking enhanced civilian of the group and led Tony directly there. 

Middle-aged and balding, the man seemed ready to cry at the sight of Ironman outside his cell. “Are you here to help us? No one will tell me why I’m here. My name’s Doug Newcomb. I’m from Virginia. They took my I.D. but you can call my wife, Debra, and she’ll tell you who I am.” 

“Remain calm,” Vision said. “We must determine who is here and seek clarification of the situation before taking action.” Careful to not show any enhanced individuals that looked anything but wholesome and innocent while the cameras were playing, Tony moved from cell to cell, meeting people and assuring them that help had arrived. 

“Pepper, I’m closing the live feed now. It looks like the shielding is going to block the signal when we go down the next level.” 

“Thanks, Tony.” Pepper didn’t comment on the signal they had discussed for when they found Bruce. A reunion with the Hulk might be simple and painless or it could involve a lot of painful smashing. The cameras didn’t need to see that either way. 

The Hulk’s cell was by necessity quite a bit lager than the average. Sitting quietly with his hands gripping his knees, the big green guy gave no sign that he had sensed their arrival. If the report they’d been given was accurate, the cell was being constantly circulated with a three percent sedative designed specifically to work on the gamma radiation monster currently breathing it. 

When designing the drug, his and Bruce’s goal had been to create a gas that would knock out the Hulk and bring Bruce back. The result had a hypnotic effect on the Hulk, calming him but they had never been able to reengage Bruce while the hulk was under its effect. They had declared it virtually useless and filed it away as a dead end. 

“Big guy, can you hear me?” Tony asked. Slowly the Hulk turned his way, but no sign of recognition or emotion sparked. “A lot of folks have been very worried about you. You want to go home, big guy?” 

Even through the drugs, the Hulk seemed to hear that last bit and nodded once gravely. 

* * *

True to his word, Deadpool didn’t linger long the next day. On his way out the door, he had set Peter a task, a final exam of sorts. 

“If you get out of the cuffs. I’ll take you home when I get back. If they’re still on, you stay, capiche?” 

Deadpool hadn’t exactly given him a chance to protest or complain. Forget that he had spent his first days here doing nothing but trying to slip his cuffs, Peter had drifted without a good idea for two days before it hit him. The small cache of tools he had used to fix Al’s television hadn’t made a single dent in the sturdily built metal cuffs, not in the beginning and not now, but Peter selected the claw hammer from the pile and took it to the kitchen. He could hear the familiar sounds of Matlock from the living room and he was glad Al would be at least a little preoccupied while he decided if he could do this. 

The cuff ran from his elbow all the way to his wrist, tapering down cleanly so that there was a tiny bit of breathing room near the elbow and a snug fit at his wrist. The cuff would turn with a bit of effort. He didn’t have tools to break down the metal, but all he really had to do was get his hand past the wrist hole. Placing his right hand flat on the table he chewed his lip and tried to decide how best to make his hand small enough to slide the cuff cleanly off. 

Popular cinema encouraged dislocating one’s thumb when faced with a cuff to slip, but that hadn’t worked out for him when he tried it at the beginning of the summer. Aside from some unpleasant thumb pain, he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Critically, Peter palpated the bones in his hand and wrist, comparing them against the tube he had to slip them through. Taking slow, measured breaths, Peter hefted the hammer with his left hand and took a swing. 

He knew he hadn’t swung the hammer hard enough, even when it ricocheted back painfully. Hissing, Peter pulled his right hand to his chest. “You can do this,” Peter whispered. “If you don’t get clear of these cuffs Deadpool is going to keep you here forever. You can’t do that to May. You can’t do that to yourself. It’s a broken bone. You’ve broken bones before. As fast as you heal, it won’t even be broken for that long. It’s just a little pain.” 

He’d broken bones and it had been a shock and it had hurt and maybe he couldn’t do this to himself? 

“Have you thought about numbing it up a bit first?” Standing in the door to the kitchen, Al made her way to Peter. She patted his shoulder and gently lifted his arm. “Brachial plexus runs through the shoulder. You hit it hard, right there, the arm will probably go numb for a bit and give you a chance to work.” 

“This is stupid. I’m not going to break my hand the get the cuff off,” Peter said. “He will just have to give me another final exam. This one is impossible.” 

“Maybe he will, but if you really want to go home, I’d suggest you slip those cuffs. Deadpool likes you and he’s enjoyed you. Don’t give him an excuse to keep you.” Al held her hand out and waited for Peter to give her a chance to feel the problem for herself. “If it weren’t so tight at the wrist or so damn long. You’re going to have to break at least one metacarpal to squeeze it through. I can help you try and get the hand numbed but you’re enhanced. I doubt I could break the bone for you even with a hammer. Do you want to try this?” 

“Not really.” Peter really didn’t want to be stuck here, not for another day if he could help it. “But I don’t have much of a choice. Let’s try to numb it.” 

It took a little finagling, but they finally managed to stretch the nerve in his arm just right and all his fingers went tingly. Moving too fast to think about it, Peter slapped the numbed hand on the table and swung his hammer to snap the long, delicate bone closest to his thumb. A second later the hammer hit the floor with a single thump and Peter was screaming. Snap was such an inadequate word for what he had done to himself with the hammer. It felt Like a bomb full of knives had exploded in his hand. Their crude attempt to numb the operation had failed miserably. 

Al grabbed his shoulder and shook his uninjured arm. “If we don’t get the cuff off before you start to heal, it was a waste. I’ll help you, but let’s move.” 

Peter nodded but he wasn’t much help, only barely managing to leave his arm extended as Al forced his broken hand out of the long cuff he’d been wearing for almost two months now. It hurt too much for him to feel any of the relief he should when the cuff slipped clear of his hand. Cradling his broken hand to his chest, Peter wiped the tears off his face with his good hand, ridiculously glad that Al was blind and wouldn’t know he was crying. 

“Kid, I need you to lay your hand flat as you can again so I can make sure the bones are lined up so they heal right.” Al patted the table and extended her hand palm up. Reluctant to punish himself any further, Peter forced himself to let her check it. With gentle efficiency Al slid her deft fingers up and down the planes of his hand, warning him if she needed to make an adjustment only briefly before shifting the fragment. Peter stared at the thick, spidery old-lady veins on top of her hand and couldn’t help wondering if Deadpool had ever played games with his other hostage that involved broken bones or penetrating injuries. 

“How is it that you know about brachial plexuses and metacarpals and setting bones? Were you a doctor?” Peter asked. 

Al shook her head and half-smiled. “Deadpool kills people for pleasure and profit. When I was young, I killed people for ideals in service of my government. Folks that kill for a living tend to know the human body. It’s the instrument of our life’s work.” 

He didn’t pull his hand back in shock and he couldn’t really say that he was surprised. Al had told him she wasn’t an innocent old lady. “Which government?” Peter asked. 

“Doesn’t much matter, kid. I’ve been retired for years. My perspective about patriotism isn’t what it used to be.” Al shook her head. “You heal fast according to Deadpool. He’d already be healed, but he can regrow limbs. Does it still hurt?” 

“It still aches, but not like it did.” 

Al covered his hand before he could try to move it. “Let’s keep it flat for a bit just in case, yeah?” 

“Thanks for helping me.” Peter didn’t bother wiping the tears on his cheek this time, just glad that his voice was clear and steady. 

“You are very welcome, kid.” 

* * *

When Deadpool finally dropped back in on his roommates, he found them sitting together on the couch, eating popcorn and watching the news. “Hola, mis amigos!” With a flourish, Deadpool settled between the two of them, an arm around each of their shoulders. “So, what are we watching? Not more Ironman closeups? I guess he did do what I asked him to do but what a fucking diva, spewing it all over the media like that. I’d have just let the detainees out and then blown the joint up. No muss no fuss.” 

“I think an exploded military complex is the definition of muss,” Al said. 

“And by involving the media, the people who did this in secret will have a harder time doing it again,” Peter added. “Don’t you agree?” 

“It would have been better with an explosion,” Deadpool complained, petulantly. “Someone else did what I asked him to do.” Deadpool inspected Peter’s arms and legs cursorily. “And you’re already healed up too.” 

“You said I could go home if I got the cuffs off, so I got them off,” Peter said. 

“And what did you learn?” Deadpool asked. 

It was a struggle for Peter not to put some distance between himself and Deadpool, but he knew better that to disrupt the friendly camaraderie the conversation had started with. No, he steeled himself to put on his calm face and discuss whatever his kidnapper required. “I learned that my brachial plexus can best be stretched by jamming my shoulder on the back of a kitchen chair. I learned that while your hand goes numb when you do that, it doesn’t stay that way especially if you’ve broken a bone. I learned that it takes about an hour for the worst of the healing to pass when mending a bone, but the appendage doesn’t really start to feel normal again for ten hours or so.” 

“And?” Deadpool asked, drawing the word out dramatically. 

“Uh, I learned that sadomasochists are insane. Pain is just painful, not pleasurable.” Peter shrugged, groping for whatever lesson Deadpool meant for him to glean from the forced mutilation. “Metal is harder to break than bone? What do you want me to say?” 

“Oh Spider-Kid, you learned that pain doesn’t kill you. You learned that your healing factor can do a Hell of a lot for you if you can bear the pain.” Deadpool ruffled Peter’s hair and bounced to his feet. “I guess it’s really time to send you home. Come on, I have some things for you.” 

A pink backpack with skulls and knives drawn on it in sharpie, appeared on the kitchen table. Deadpool opened the main compartment and pulled out a fistful of M.R.E.s and an old Playboy from the eighties. He rummaged around for a bit longer before finally extracting a red and blue spider-suit. “Now this isn’t fancy like the suit Stark made you, but you need a backup that doesn’t tie you to that asshole. It’s got Kevlar in the weave and I think I got the pattern right.” He held up a fluffy white ball. “Detachable rabbit tail for old time’s sake.” 

“Thanks?” Peter said. 

Deadpool repacked the backpack and thrust it at Peter. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. Come here little guy.” 

Not fleeing in the face of Deadpool’s overly enthusiastic hug took every bit of Peter’s self-control, but he let his kidnapper hug him and cry on him and pet him on the head. When the histrionics were over, Deadpool opened a portal into a very familiar living room in Queens and dropped Peter through it. 

"May?" Peter called. "I'm home." 

No one answered and for the moment simple privacy was a relief. Fleeing to his room, Peter stuffed everything from Deadpool (the knives, the clothes, the extra suit) into the pink backpack and stowed it in the back of his closet. He closed the door and sank into his desk chair. He was really home? He still smelled Deadpool and his home. Peter's senses were too acute to miss the residue that clung to his very skin. 

Turning the shower as hot as he could stand, Peter tried to wash away every particle of his summer, determined to be clean and clear at least superficially. 

When May finally made it home she found her nephew half-asleep on the sofa. She hugged him and cried on him, but it was so different than the same act from Deadpool. Peter felt safe and relaxed. He let her fuss over him and feed him and when she asked him if he was okay, he lied. "I'm fine. He locked me up with another hostage and pretty much left me alone all summer. It wasn't very fun, but it wasn't terrible either." Peter made himself smile, trying to sell the tame version of his summer. "Really, it was mostly boring." 

"Okay," May said. "Okay. It could have been worse, then. We should call Stark. He's still looking for you, you know?" 

Peter nodded, feeling sick to his stomach. "Mr. Stark, he doesn't know what Deadpool really wants. I need to warn him. He's in danger." 


	7. Nerds, Not Just a Fruity Candy

Chapter 7 – Nerds, Not Just a Fruity Candy

If you asked Bruce Banner what it was like when he turned into the hulk, he would tell you it was almost like drowning. The angry titan that lived in the back of most men’s minds set free on the world. Bruce became the voice inside its head, begging it not to smash the wrong person or thing. It was a timeless existence, and when Bruce blinked his way out of it, he never knew how much time had really passed since he slipped under. 

Tony sitting at his bedside was a clue that maybe it had been longer than average. More silver had crept into his hairline, a few more wrinkles around his eyes. Bruce tried not to panic. “Hey, I had the strangest dream. I was in the desert, minding my own business and a hoard of goons picked a fight with me. Did I smash them? Were there any casualties?” 

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Tony said. “I thought you were going to sleep another day away.” 

“The post-green nap isn’t always strictly voluntary. Are you going to fill me in? Did I hurt anyone?” Bruce asked. 

“Anyone you hurt from the ‘desert goons’ probably deserved it, but I don’t know. You’ve been out of commission for a while. Let’s start with some easy questions. Do you know who you are, who I am, where you are? Can you name the president?” 

Definitely not a typical post-green nap, Bruce decided, stress of the unknown raising his heart rate and stirring the beast inside. “I’m Bruce, you’re Tony, this looks like a hospital room, and the guy with the ears, Obama.” 

“I think all the presidents have had ears.” Tony sighed and smiled grimly. “You need to stay calm buddy, but you’ve lost a few years. Something I’m partially to blame for. I’d appreciate you not going green and smashing me until I’ve explained from the beginning. Do you need a second to breathe?” 

“Years? I’ve been unconscious for years?” Bruce forced himself to not panic; going green right now would not help things. “That hasn’t happened before.” 

“Not unconscious precisely. Do you remember that hypnotic agent we came up with? You know, the one we discarded as a failure since it left you docile but indefinitely green. Thanks to some unfortunate espionage that has been happening in spurts for years, it got out. You were being held, gassed into submission and green, apparently since the goons in the desert.” Tony shrugged, not able to look Bruce in the eyes. “Sorry.” 

“Who? Who stole the formula? Who was holding me? Years. God. Do you know what the wrong scientist could do with an unlimited supply of my blood in a year?” Bruce was out of bed and looking for clothes before he finished firing off questions. “It was Ross, wasn’t it? Was it Ross?” The green wave was on him, ready to sweep him away, but Bruce made himself breathe. He made himself cycle away from the emotion that would cost him more time. 

“I won’t stop until I know exactly who was involved on all levels. You have my word.” Tony tossed Bruce a set of tan scrubs and some tennis shoes. “If you think you can handle it, I’ll show you what I’ve got.” Taken aback by the glitter of green in Bruce’s eyes, he took an involuntary step away. “Or maybe we should just have some breakfast first, your call.” 

“I could eat a pancake or twelve.” 

* * *

The way Peter saw it, coming home after being held hostage was bound to be a process, whether you were being detained by terrorists or an immortal time-traveling assassin. He knew to expect a debriefing from Mr. Stark and a bit of hysteria from his aunt. He would have been surprised by anything less. This wasn’t Peter’s first post-crisis rodeo. You rode the wave of worry or grief, doing what your family needed until everyone was ready to at least feign normality again. 

Having Mr. Stark and May tag team him into getting a physical had been a little surprising, and he protested a bit on principal. He was perfectly healthy; every laceration and broken bone had healed well before they could even see them. The physical wasn’t such a large concession, really. No, he was saving his real resistance for other easily foreseen issues. 

After he watched Uncle Ben die, May had tried to set him up with a counselor, but Peter hadn’t been willing then and he wasn’t going to let her make him now. It was probably stupid of him, but he had no desire to discuss the details of what happened or how he felt about it. He could deal with his own head, thank you very much. 

So Peter let the Avenger’s personal physician give him a scan and a listen and a couple of blood tests. He was perfectly compliant, right up until she asked him to head down the hall to speak with Dr. Reynolds, a very kind, very qualified psychiatrist. Peter didn’t argue. He waited until he was alone and turned left instead of right at the end of the corridor. Peter decided to see if he could find something interesting before he got stopped by security or a random Avenger. When they asked him why he wasn’t having a healing and therapeutic conversation with Dr. Reynolds, he could always pretend he got lost on the way. 

Using some of the skills Deadpool had hammered into him, Peter quickly made it a game of avoiding detection as he slipped through the corridors, peeking into labs and a lot of empty rooms. The number of empty rooms was a little sad. For the first time, Peter wondered if maybe Mr. Stark had really meant to make him an Avenger after his successful capture of Toomes. 

Peter had successfully made it up two floors before he found an occupied room. The man inside spotted him, and Peter decided to play it cool, pretend he belonged. The room was a kitchenette of some kind and the man looked a bit rumpled in a pair of tan scrubs. Peter raised a hand in greeting and nonchalantly walked to the fridge to look for Avenger appropriate snacks. Not surprisingly, the fridge was full of healthy fare like bean sprouts and tofu cubes. Spotting something more mundane and caffeinated, Peter selected a brightly-colored energy drink. 

“Hey,” the man said. “Are you an intern?” 

Pleased to be handed a familiar cover, Peter nodded. “Yeah, Stark internship. I’m an intern.” Who he was talking to hit him like a punch in the gut; that wasn’t some rumpled orderly, that was Dr. Bruce Banner. Peter dropped the beverage he had been contemplating stealing. “Oh my God, you’re Bruce Banner. Sorry I mean Dr. Banner. I can’t even believe this. I’m a huge fan.” 

“A fan? Tell me you aren’t a member of one of those dopey clubs?” It didn’t take a genius to pick on the derision in the question. “The big guy doesn’t sign autographs and he won’t be making an appearance today (hopefully).” 

“I’m not in any clubs, well technically I’m on my school’s Academic Decathlon team where I’m the physics specialist. It’s how I discovered you. The official study book recommended reading your first paper on the thermodynamics of gamma radiation. It was a revelation. Frankly, I’ve read everything you ever bothered to publish. My personal favorite was the paper for your third doctorate, the one with the goldfish. Not many people can describe a Fourier transformation with a sense of humor. It’s a huge honor to meet you.” Peter nabbed his soda from the floor and shuffled his feet, knowing he should leave but sorely tempted to stay. 

Shaking his head, Bruce couldn’t help feeling flattered that a random Stark intern knew his name for more than his green alter ego. “So, you’re obviously taking a break. You can stay if you want. I promise not to insinuate you’re an Avenger groupie again.” 

“Really?” Peter asked, already settling at the table. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re working on now?” 

“I’m between projects. You really got the goldfish joke?” Bruce asked. “The only other person to ever notice it that I’m aware of was Tony. You get to certain academic levels and the people reviewing the articles for publication don’t always understand what they’re reading. If the stuffed shirts in the ivy league had understood the math, they’d have gotten the joke and they would have made me edit it out, but they didn’t. So, a handful of people in the world got a good chuckle. It’s kind of the ultimate inside joke. You have a name, Stark intern?” 

“Peter, sorry, I should have said.” They shook hands and Peter sipped his sweetly fizzy beverage quietly for a few awkward moments. “So, you stayed out of the Sokovia Accords thing. I mean, you weren’t there in Germany when it went down.” 

“Sokovia Accords? I’ve been out of touch for a few years. What went down in Germany?” Bruce asked. 

“Out of touch, were you hiding under a rock?” When Bruce just stared blandly back, Peter ploughed forward. “Short version—Germany was Captain America and friends vs. Ironman and others in a battle royal over how much oversight the Avengers ought to subject themselves to.” 

“Really? Who won?” Bruce asked. 

“Have you seen how empty this place is?” Peter shrugged. “I kind of think everyone lost.” 

Interrupting their conversation, F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice intoned, “Mr. Parker, you are overdue for your appointment. I’ll generate a path. Please follow the light.” A steady yellow glow appeared in the floor and marched toward the door in a repeating loop. 

“Wow, how helpful.” Peter stared at the steadily beeping light, trying to think of a way to stall since it would be hard to get lost again. “Could I ask you a hypothetical question, Dr. Banner?” 

Bruce looked at the blinking light and then back to the malingering intern and mentally shrugged. If the kid didn’t care that he was late, why should he? “Ask away.” 

“If hypothetically I’d met a time traveler and he changed the past, did he prove string theory when the world didn’t end?” Peter asked. 

“Maybe? First, time travel isn’t plausible. Whoever this hypothetical time traveler is, he’s probably working an angle, a scam.” Bruce sighed. Sometimes the smartest people had no common sense, but this was an intern working for Tony Stark, who had enough clearance to wander Avenger’s headquarters without a chaperone. He tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. “I’ve seen more crazy things in my life so…” Bruce shrugged. “Your time traveler is probably a con artist, but anything is possible. Did he try to sell you stock options or get money out of you another way? Did he maybe try to get an introduction to Tony?” 

Not surprised that Dr. Banner immediately assumed the hypothetical part of his questions was a formality, Peter tried not to feel condescended to by his other recommendations. Peter grew up in Queens not Connecticut. He knew how a grift worked and how not to get scammed easily. “This isn’t a hypothetical Nigerian email scam. I’m not an idiot. If he’s working an angle as you put it, it’s a really obscure one.” Peter pulled a sharpie out of his pocket and started writing on the steel table top. He sketched out a block of numbers in a familiar complex transformation. “This guy travels back in time and starts changing things from the moment he steps foot in the world. It didn’t create a paradox that ended our universe, so you can throw out the traditional models of time. I was thinking, if you examined this traveler on an atomic level, you’d see the effects of the trip, maybe even be able to extrapolate data on the true nature of time.” 

“It’s a nice thought, if the man is a real time traveler.” Bruce pointed to the third row of numbers. “You missed a constant.” 

Peter scribbled a quick correction, then offered the sharpie to Bruce. “I don’t think he would be willing to be studied, even if it was just to look for evidence of time travel. He had a bad experience with some less than ethical scientists. If I see him again, I could ask him if he might let you have a look.” Peter shrugged. 

“Why not you? It’s your idea. If the hypothetical time traveler visits again, you should strap him to a mass spectrometer and see what you find.” Bruce nodded to the steadily blinking light. “Aren’t you worried that you’ll lose your intern gig if you keep ignoring your appointment?” 

Peter took another slow sip of his soda and sighed, he leaned forward conspiratorially. “Honestly, I’m not really an intern. It was amazing to meet you. I’m glad you’re back from wherever you were. Mr. Stark could use the backup I think.” Peter glared at the light. “I’m coming already.” 

“Okay, nice to meet you too, I guess.” Not very long after Peter followed the glowing trail from the room, Bruce’s host returned. Tony sauntered over and took a seat across the table. 

“You finished breakfast. Are you feeling, better?” Tony pushed the half-empty energy drink away from him with a frown. 

“I’m fine. Did you know there are children wandering around this place impersonating Stark interns?” Bruce asked. 

“Don’t let the teenager hear you call him a child,” Tony said. “I take it you met Peter, and yeah that’s a complicated situation. He’s a good kid.” 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “A complicated teen who isn’t actually an intern that you know well enough to consider him a ‘good kid’. Dear God, did I just meet your love child from the wild and sexy 2000s.” 

“No! Never say that again. There might be a tabloid writer in the duct work. Peter isn’t a relative. He’s a colleague, a sort of junior Avenger, a bit more your flavor than mine. You know?” 

“That skinny kid is enhanced?” Of course, Bruce himself didn’t look terribly impressive until the wave of green swelled him to smashing heights. “How did that happen?” 

“Kid doesn’t like to talk about it, but he uses his powers for good, not evil. I’ve restrained myself from digging into the mystery.” Tony leaned forward, scanning the equation on his table. “Is there a reason you’re defacing the furniture with theoretical math systems, while drinking wildly-unhealthy, overcaffeinated beverages? I can get you a pen and some paper or a laptop, whatever you want.” 

“It’s a sharpie on stainless steel. A little ethanol and it will wipe right off. Besides it was your junior Avenger that did the defacing. He was telling me about meeting a supposed time traveler. I think that graffiti might be the start of a reasonably well thought out thesis if the kid decides to pursue theoretical physics in college.” 

“Theoretical physics is a waste of a good mind, fun reading but it’s mostly useless and unprovable. If Peter doesn’t pursue a practical science like chemistry or robotics, I’ll give him Hell.” Tony stood and started rummaging around in the freezer. “Did I hear a request for ethanol? I’m sure there’s some vodka in here somewhere. We can clean the table, have a little mid-morning cocktail, and talk about Peter’s time traveler. What do you say?” 

“There’s really a time traveler?” Bruce asked. He accepted the shot of ice cold vodka Tony handed him. “Are you sure?” 

“The time traveler, Deadpool, knew where to find you and that you needed help, among other things he shouldn’t have. He has some interesting technology that I’ve not seen before. He’s also a scary flavor of insane and the reason we’re forcing Peter to attend a few mandatory counseling sessions.” Tony drained his shot and winced. “He kidnapped the kid and held him hostage this summer. The doctor says there’s nothing physically wrong with him, but the kid’s enhanced. He heals fast, and she found some impressive, inexplicable scarring. Peter doesn’t want to talk about the details. He’s physically fine, end of story. Personally, I don’t care if Deadpool’s a time traveler or if he technically did you a good turn.” Tony refilled his shot glass and raised it in salute to Bruce. “Want to help me catch the psycho before he hurts anyone else?” 

Bruce had only known Peter for a morning, had barely exchanged pleasantries but the thought of a maniac torturing him stirred the hulk within. He clinked glasses with Tony and they downed their shots. “Sounds like he needs capturing. It also sounds like he probably has lots of dirt on the people who held me. Sign me up.” 

* * *

Dr. Reynolds was a psychiatrist, but Peter couldn’t help thinking she looked rather like an admiral in her navy Chanel suit and neatly curled white hair. They had exchanged names, signed forms and gone through the basic disclaimers any counselor will give you before speaking with them. The next twenty minutes went by in small talk, discussing school and grades and extracurricular activities. “You’ll forgive me Peter, but I have to ask about your summer. Would you mind telling me what happened?” 

Peter shrugged, resting his hands on his knees, determined not to cross his arms or give away any other body language that he wasn’t being open. “I was already debriefed by Mr. Stark. Deadpool drugged me and held me hostage. He returned me when he felt his demands had been met. I spent the summer watching Matlock reruns with Al and eating MREs. It was paradoxically boring and nerve wracking but that’s it. The other bits that I told Mr. Stark are need to know, and you don’t.” 

“Okay, you don’t need to tell me anything classified, but maybe you could tell me more about the other hostage. Did you become friends with Al? Are you worried about him?” 

“Her,” Peter corrected. “It’s short for Althea. She’s older and blind, but ridiculously capable for all that. I guess we became friends, sort of. She looked out for me, but she was more Deadpool’s friend than mine, if that makes sense? I mean she was a hostage too, but not the way I was. She wasn’t trying to go anywhere.” 

“It sounds complicated,” Dr. Reynolds said. “Do you think Deadpool may hurt her now that you’re gone?” 

“Sure, but she’s safer without me there messing up their status quo. Deadpool is like a gun with a really light trigger. If you know where his triggers are and know not to apply pressure, you can operate pretty safely around him. Al will be fine, probably.” Peter couldn’t explain why it was important not to admit what had happened to him, but he also knew he was losing the battle, telling more than he meant every time he opened his mouth. 

“Tell me about one of Deadpool’s triggers.” 

“I don’t suppose you’d believe that I never triggered him?” The doctor just gazed back, patient and kind, waiting. “Stupid random things would set him off, like quoting a pop song or disrespecting Bea Arthur,” Peter said. 

“Who’s Bea Arthur?” Dr. Reynolds asked, innocently. 

Peter couldn’t help himself; he gestured dramatically. “Not knowing who Bea Arthur was triggered him hard. I’m sorry but the Golden Girls aren’t even in reruns in 2017. If they were, they would not be on my Netflix recommended list.” 

“That sounds remarkably unpredictable and unreasonable. If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t make you, but I’d like to know what Deadpool did if you set him off. What happened when you didn’t recognize the name Bea Arthur?” 

Staring at the floor between his feet, Peter considered saying nothing for the rest of his appointment, just letting silence fill the room with imagined hurts that were probably far worse than anything that actually happened. “It wasn’t that bad. He pulled a gun, put it to my forehead, and then decided not to kill me. He made me watch a Golden Girl’s marathon with him instead.” 

“If that’s not that bad, I have to ask, what’s bad?” Dr. Reynold’s asked. 

Peter shrugged. Having to break your own bones for a chance to go home? Being beaten within an inch of your life day after day, knowing that it was going to happen again in the interest of ‘training’ the weakness out of you? Ten thousand volts if you got too close to a possible exit? “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“You don’t have to, Peter, but I need you to hear something, whether you ever tell me a fraction of what happened to you this summer. Everything about what happened to you was bad, very bad, but none of it was your fault,” Dr. Reynolds said. “Did this individual have a name aside from Deadpool?” 

“Um, Wade Wilson,” Peter said. “Why?” 

“Deadpool is the name of a monster. In this room we talk about men. Mr. Wilson might have behaved monstrously, but he’s just a man. He’s likely psychologically ill and you can’t let his damage in turn damage you. Monsters are sometimes born. They’re often made by other monsters. We keep ourselves sane by finding healthy ways to process the traumas in our lives. You seem remarkably resilient. There is a book I’d like you to read. It’s called The Body Remembers. We’ll talk again next week.” 

Peter nodded, still looking at the floor. “This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced trauma. Talking about it doesn’t make it easier. I prefer to put it out of my mind, but I’ll read the book and I’ll come back next week because my aunt needs it. She needs you to tell her I’m okay because she doesn’t completely believe me.” Peter looked up, his expression defiant. “Just so you understand, this isn’t for me.” 

“You wouldn’t be the first person who came to counseling for someone else. Forgive me if I try to make it worth your time.” Dr. Reynolds walked with him back to Aunt May and their ride, Happy. 

On the way home, May chattered at him, discussing mundane things like dinner and shopping for school next month. He responded in all the right spots, but his focus was elsewhere, his mind worrying at a disturbing thread Dr. Reynolds had unraveled near the end of their session. As soon as he could, Peter escaped to his bedroom and went to his closet. Ignoring the satchel of goodies from Deadpool, Peter rummaged through old puzzles and board games until his bucket of Legos came to hand. He dumped bricks and plastic men onto his bed. They were the last toy his parents had given him, a toy he would probably never throw away. For a big part of his childhood he had played with them every day. 

Peter sifted through the colorful blocks, looking for a particular plastic man, his favorite when he was little. It was red with a space helmet and a blaster. He had named everything back then and his mom let him write their names on more often than not. When he finally found the toy, he looked at the bottom of its foot. In childish, blocky scrawl the word Wade was printed. Wade Wilson (alliteration was everything) had stared in so many Lego adventures back then. 

Clutching the toy in his fist, Peter took slow measured breaths. What were the odds? Not for the first time, Peter questioned whether Deadpool actually knew him in the future, but this time he wondered, could Deadpool be him? Peter laughed while blinking back tears, horribly certain that his hunch was right. 

Eschewing the high tech suit he normally wore for patrol, he pulled out the gift from Deadpool. Peter left a quick note for May and he slipped out the window. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note:**
> 
> So if you hate the twist, throw rotten fruit. I can take it. 
> 
> A couple of things I wanted to mention. 
> 
> 1\. The meaning of the title is dual. I was not going for random nonsense, though with Deadpool that can pass. When reading quantum physics for dummies and they were explaining different models to understand time, the fact that you can’t unscramble an egg came up as a metaphor and I thought it was perfect for what this story was supposed to be. So it’s a metaphor for time travel and also for Deadpool and Peter. Deadpool is the scrambled egg. Peter is whole. Deadpool, even by traveling in time can’t unscramble the egg that he is, but he could stop the scrambling of his younger self. 
> 
> 2\. Whether Deadpool consciously understands that Peter is him before he went through extreme makeover Mengele edition is up for interpretation. I’m not telling. It may come out in the epilogue but that’s unwritten. 
> 
> 3\. Before it’s asked, why isn’t Deadpool sticky if he’s an older, experimented on Peter? Not all the experiments were as successful as others. A complication from the damage to his skin was losing the sticking properties of his hands and feet. 
> 
> 4\. There will probably be an epilogue between Peter and Deadpool and then I’m marking this story complete. There is more story to tell but it would be a part 2 with a different format. I’ve regretted the format I chose for this story from early on. It would have been better as an alternating narrative that moved between the two timelines. If and when I write the next part, that will be the structure. 


	8. Epilogue

Any illusion that Peter would find Deadpool skulking around just waiting to be confronted faded quickly. Only after weeks of diligent patrolling did his spider sense finally start thrumming again. In retrospect it was obvious that the prickliness to his spider sense early in the summer had been Deadpool stalking him. Deciding to play it cool at least to start, Peter pretended not to notice the change. He swung out his window like usual, looking for someone he could help. Following a well-tread path of buildings he used almost daily, he also tried to find a direction for the attention from his stalker. 

A woman walking home with a heavy load of groceries and being harassed by a pair of teenagers caught his eye. Peter swung down to offer assistance. Just his appearance was enough to stop the teens short and turn them around. “Hey, do you have far to go?” Peter asked. “I could help you carry those the rest of the way.” 

“Carrying groceries? Seriously?” Deadpool slipped from the shadows, sporting his usual uniform and many prominently displayed weapons. “All right lady, where do you live?” 

When the woman just stared at him wide-eyed. Deadpool pulled a gun and repeated himself. “What is your address? Donde estas tu casa? Me and the kid are late for a unitards anonymous meeting. As you can see, we’re both off the wagon.” 

“Woah, no way.” Peter tried to impose himself between Deadpool and the woman, but he was hit in the face with an electrified rod that looked rather like a super-powered cattle prod. It dropped him like a twitchy rock. 

“I... 195 Jamaica Avenue. Please don’t shoot me.” The lady squeezed her eyes shut, apparently waiting for Deadpool to murder her. 

Using his portal generating belt, Deadpool dialed up her apartment and pushed the woman through. 

“You can’t menace random innocent pedestrians with handguns!” Peter shouted, his voice still warbling from the jolt of electricity Deadpool had hit him with. “Have you lost your mind?” 

“Ages ago, never found it.” Deadpool holstered his gun and grinned. “How ya been kid? I got your note. What did you want to talk about?” 

“My note?” Peter asked. If he had an address, he could have dropped a note. “I didn’t leave you a note.” 

“Are you sure?” Deadpool dropped into a cross-legged position next to Peter on the ground and rummaged through the many satchels and pockets in his suit to produce a worn and stained piece of paper. “If you didn’t leave that at Sister Margaret’s, then who did?” 

Peter took the piece of paper and read through it quickly. “It’s signed Tony Stark.” 

“Right, but Stark wouldn’t be writing me. He should be thanking his lucky stars I’ve left him off the to-kill list and trying to avoid my notice. So my assumption is that it’s some fancy code from you, my brainy teen protégé.” When Peter just shook his head in response, Deadpool shrugged. “Ah well, I sometimes overinterpret these things. If Tony wants to have a word with me, who am I to deny him? I should have brought more guns.” 

“Wait, I didn’t write the note, but we need to talk. You went out of your way to help me, so maybe I could help you a little.” Peter pulled off his mask, sort of hoping Deadpool might reciprocate. “Please, just, I know who you really are.” 

“Heh, who I really am?” Not giving Peter a chance to recover from the shock that had knocked him down, Deadpool activated another portal and drug Peter through struggling. 

Using his sticky hands and feet to give superior leverage, Peter managed to wriggle free and roll to his feet. Worried that he would be back in the box or Deadpool’s home, Peter was relieved to recognize the open air and a familiar, if distant skyline. Cool green, oxidized bronze under his feet left no doubt where they were, a few hundred feet up in the air, corralled by lady liberty’s crown. “What was that for? Why did you take us up here?” 

“It’s a good place for a private conversation. Now, you act like my identity is some kind of secret.” Deadpool pointed to his masked face. “If I had any interest in hiding who I am, I’d wear less red and try to blend in better. I’m an open book.” 

Peter stood straighter, more determined in the face of Deadpool’s bluster. “I know where you came up with the pseudonym, Wade Wilson. Do you know where it’s from?” 

“I made it up,” Deadpool said. “It just came to me.” 

Peter tossed the red toy he had been carrying with him for weeks to Deadpool. “I made it up too, when I was four. He was my favorite toy, spaceman with the blaster. I even wrote his name on. Do you see?” 

Deadpool laughed. “Oh God, you think you’re an itty bitty wimpy-ass version of me? Peter, you probably told me about Wade when we were in the hospital together. I just forgot. They put my brain through a meat grinder. It’s called personality stripping, makes it easier for the control chip to keep you in line. I told you, you were good to me. It’s why I helped you. Tell you what though, you have a look see and tell me if you think we’re both Peter Parker.” With a flourish, he pulled his mask off exposing the mangled and mottled flesh that made up his complexion. 

Part of him wanted to just agree with Deadpool, to agree that he wasn’t any version of Peter’s future, but through the distortion of ravaged tissue, Peter recognized himself, his eyes, his face. “If you let me, I have connections, friends, that might be able to help you. Mr. Stark...” 

“Fuck you—I don’t need help from anyone, especially not from Tony Stark. You still think he’s a hero, but he isn’t. Maybe he never pushed a plunger or opened a skull in the Shop, but he held their leashes and used the soldiers. He held my Goddamned leash for years and years until the control chip failed and I went rogue.” Deadpool smiled grimly. “You know what kid, it doesn’t matter who I was. I know who I am. Fuck the past. It’s dead.” Deadpool tossed Peter’s toy back to him. “Just do me one favor. Take his help, smile to his face, but don’t trust Tony Stark; I taught you better. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be naive. Don’t fucking disappoint me.” 

“I just can’t see it. You just said that your memory was compromised...” Peter stopped talking when Deadpool drew both his guns. “But I’ll be careful and cautious. I won’t disappoint you.” 

“It’s all I ask. I’d hate to have wasted my time on you. Oh and you’ll give Stark a message for me? Tell him to back off or I’m putting him back on my to-kill list.” 

“I’ll ask him to back off, but you have to do a favor for me. Try to be good?” Peter asked, realizing how vague and childish the request sounded once it was out of his mouth. 

“Oh I can try, but don’t expect me to succeed.” 

Leaving Peter standing atop the Statue of Liberty’s head, Deadpool pulled his mask back on and leapt gracefully through a portal to parts unknown. 


End file.
